Kremlinden Lab Rejects User Bill of Rights
by Alphaville Herald on 13/09/05 at 5:22 am
In a disappointing ruling by Chairman Rosedale and Kremlinden Lab, a popular user-initiated proposal to institutionalize avatar rights has been rejected without credible justification. The proposal, called for the following rights:
freedom of speech
freedom of expression in builds
freedom of press
freedom to bear arms in combat areas
the right to know charges against oneself
the right to self-representation and appeal
Kremlinden Lab, rejected the proposal, classifying it as “Can’t Do”, stating that “it [would] require development time.” Yep, allowing free press and free speech sure eats up those programmers’ time cards. Geez guys, if you are going to lie, could you at least try to come up with a halfway credible lie?
Prokofy Neva
Sep 13th, 2005
I think “can’t do” about sums it up on that one. But how many votes did this “popular prop” get? I can’t tell. And I would have voted for it if I could find it in the morass of props — and that’s just one of many ways this “direct democracy” doesn’t function, you can’t find things or support likeminded.
To be fair, Chairman Rosedale had this to say: “I think this is an important topic to debate, but isn’t a ‘feature’ in the sense that it will require development time. I’m going to close it here, but I’m happy to discuss the topic further in other venues”.
Yes, it’s not a “feature” of a game, no, he’s right. It’s more like a “foundation” for a “country”. But, hey, you weren’t giving him the benefit of the doubt. He’s happy to discuss this in other venues. Remember when I asked him if he’d sign a Magna Carta and he said it would be “an inspiring document”? Feh. You people don’t get that Chairman Phil doesn’t see any proper leaders fit to rule from among teh ppl. Teh ppl are not ready for democracy.
TrannyPet Barmy
Sep 13th, 2005
LMFAO – what more can be said ? I’ve been telling you what these people are about for MONTHS now !!! Why not take the time to read http://www.secondcentral.com there’s lots of stuff there all about LL, and a fair few pissed off customers to !!!
LL are very scared that any one should get any power, either through land ownership and market share, through following, or, through ability.
Not surprising with the likes of Anshe about, who they pretty much cant touch now, not with out losing large amounts of profit. It is a bit of a stale mate though, Anshe isnt likely to say “if you dont do X then i will leave and take my business elsewhere”, because there isnt really any place else *yet* that she can take her business, conversely LL not being able to say “ok anshe, you broke the ToS, out you go”, not with out losing shit loads of profit.
*** fairplay to you Anshe
***
Freedom of Press, freedom of speech, knowing charges, self rep & appeal – of course its a no no, all that i said above would become completely apparent if it was implemented. As for the bearing arms point, of course they wont allow that, as soon as folks dont have the easy option of whining to the AR system any longer, again, a LARGE proportion of their users will give up !!!!
Hate to tell you this, but until you guys are prepared to simply pack up and leave if things dont change, either to another environment of a similar quality when one comes available, or to just leave, you have nothing to bargain with, and you are simply fighting a totally lost cause, LL *KNOW* they have you by the nutz and there is *NOTHING* you can do about it, with out solidarity and union in action ie; leaving.
The funniest thing of it all, is they are refusing to give the users fundamental basics of any modern democratic civilisation, what they run is supposedly all so lovely and great, but when you actually look at it, it’s no more than a Fascist MetaDictatorship, with the judge, jury, executioner and monarch all being held by the same group’s hand. *our word is final, NO questions, and totally NO answers*
good luck in your battle, may the force be with you
TrannyPet Barmy
ps. dragons cove, why not add us to your list of links on the right
Aimee Weber
Sep 13th, 2005
I am a little confused by the reporting here. You said that the feature request marked “Can’t DO” because “it [would] require development time.”
But the Linden notes state it was closed because it WOULDN’T require development time:
“…but isn’t a ‘feature’ in the sense that it will require development time.”
My impression here is that the Lindens consider the Feature Voting System a tool for voting on features rather than policy. But they went on to say that they consider this an IMPORTANT ISSUE and would be “happy to discuss the topic further in other venues.”
Forgive me if my analysis is off the mark. I haven’t had my first Diet Coke yet
oogles
Sep 13th, 2005
what are you talking about?
Kanker Greenacre
Sep 13th, 2005
You misread the Linden comment. Here is the full sentence:
“I think this is an important topic to debate, but isn’t a ‘feature’ in the sense that it will require development time.”
They mean it isn’t a feature that requires development time, unlike, say, Havok 2.
Urizenus
Sep 13th, 2005
Ah now I see. Thanks for the Linden exegesis, guys. Still doesn’t explain the “Can’t do” part though. Does this mean they can’t do it because it’s too easy?
Elle Pollack
Sep 13th, 2005
I think it means that they can’t do it through the feature voting system, simply by a signifigant number of people willing it so, it would have to go through the afformentioned discussion stages first.
Ben Linden
Sep 13th, 2005
TrannyPet,
I tried to take the time to read http://www.secondcentral.com, but it seems as though I am Banned! Shocking as it is, we do take the time to read our residents concerns – even if we don’t always agree. However, it’s impossible to agree or disagree if I can’t read it.
On topic, I wrote some on this a while back: http://secondlife.blogs.com/change/2005/06/the_first_draft.html
I’d love to hear more from you guys.
mike czukor
Sep 13th, 2005
ah yes, another LL “dont ask, dont tell” policy………………..anyway lil off topic, but neccesary! im coming back on sl tommorow
!
Kanker Greenacre
Sep 13th, 2005
I looked up “exegesis” in the dictionary. It means “explanation, critical analysis, or interpretation of a word.” Here Urizenus is using “exegesis” to mean “thanks for explaining what the Lindens meant by ‘I think this is an important topic to debate, but isn’t a “feature” in the sense that it will require development time.’ ” I like Aimee’s explanation of what the “Can’t Do” means, namely, the Features Voting Tool isn’t intended for this kind of request, but if someone wants to try again in another way, they’re all for it.
seldon metropolitan
Sep 13th, 2005
I think this is an acceptable response as long as it doesn’t sideline the issue. I also think that this along with robin’s comments at the RAC meeting concerning the removal of “policy” features from the voting tool show the need for a seperate tool for non-development feature/policy discussion.
marilyn murphy
Sep 13th, 2005
aimee has it right i think. gasp. it still leaves that naughty little agreement we signed with LL. the one where they own everything and can ban us from the site at will. therefore, any discussion with LL on this issue is gravy. they dont have to discuss squat with us.
the only two real issues in that it appears is the right to know the charges against us. which has gone on for years now. then the right to self preservation.
i havent seen any repression of the press or free speech or in builds myself, but maybe i am wrong.
marilyn murphy
Sep 13th, 2005
sorry, i meant right to self representation and appeal… lol, i havent had my latte.
Prokofy Neva
Sep 13th, 2005
Well we’re hopeless suck-ups, I guess, Uri, that’s why we didn’t spin it the other way. And we’re all in a “dialogue process” now with Chairman Phil so we haven’t become the “radical middle” or the “intractable” left or whatever yet on the question of: Can Phil Change?
I think the pressure of these groups forming forced them to speed up their review of the languishing webpage and finally come clean on issues like officer recall — they say they really are removing it (of course it “has a bug” and that means it might not see the light of day), but it’s interesting that if removed, it represents a success not only of a resident-run proposition campaign (I voted for it but didn’t run it) but also just a near-daily jumping-up-and-down campaign by yours truly — and really, I think it will take a variety of methods besides this voting page to get change for the good accomplished.
But how far can they go? Not very far. They don’t have a means of really separating powers like in a country with three branches of power and elections and so on because they own the software and lease the servers. Kinda hard to get around that. The only thing you can do is have a kind of Russian serf-like quit-renters movement…but geez, we all know where *that* led, to 1917 and bloodshed. We just don’t have any tea to put into any Boston harbours, that’s the problem. We just don’t have stuff. I mean, any huge content creator that is feted by Lindens and media alike, or any huge landowner or Linden cash owner in the game has the power to really bork up the game good with things like a consumer boycot…but that only turns people against them, gets them booted, and is of limited lasting power. And do they really own the grid or even a significant part of it? I think the Lindens have always taken care to keep power that accrues very much off balance and dispersed — except their own, of course.
For the life of me, I don’t know why Trannypet natters on and on with some kind of wierd “I told you so” — duh, doesn’t everybody get it? It’s just that maybe they want to try to push out the boundaries a bit.
What we have to do though is keep calling them on their rhetoric. We need to really push on this issue of what they’ve sequestered off as “policy” in the “can’t do” department because “we don’t do those windows”. They can’t be going to the meeting and touting some “direct democracy” thingie with players voting on game features without a significant dissenting voice pointing out that this is just bread and circuses.
What do you mean you “can’t do” free speech when you could make a modest start by more equally enforcing the TOS on the forums — and so on.
Really, to me the game feels very much like the game with the Kremlin. You can do a flame-out dissent thing but they will just put you in jail or kill you. So you have to be like a Yevteshenko or an Arbatov type figure that works within the system and rebels sort of artistically or only in salons with foreigners or in books published abroad but more or less goes along with the system. It’s important that a class of people go on doing that, I guess, it’s the only thing that works in RL. Then teh ppl can get organized into solidarity labour unions and grassroots movements with tacit support from the salonistas here and there but only if they renounce their WA cooptation by the FIC apprenticeship guilds and fight the class warfare imposed upon them by the FIC. Yes, I’m serious : )
Note the FICmistress Extraordinaire is doing one of her sophist literal thingies again, Uri, beware.
unhygienix
Sep 13th, 2005
“Other venues”
What other venues are there for discussing this? We don’t *have* a policy voting section of the website, only a feature voting one. Since we don’t currently have the means to enact policy, only suggest it, the Features voting system was the *best* place to put it up for mooting, and let it sink or swim based on popular support. It was the only place to find out whether it would receive a mandate from the community.
Sure, it can be discussed on the forums, it already has been, been debated to death. In the end, how do we come together as a group, as a community, and tell the Lindens, “THIS. This is what we need, what our community needs. It should be policy, and if there are going to be community standards that the Lindens hold residents to, so too should there be standards that the governing body of the community ( the Lindens) hold itself up to. Here are our votes, you can measure this idea’s popularity, how much support it has, how many of us were able to come to agreement with this.”
Sure, it’s not a feature, but how else are we to suggest it to the lindens, in a manner that shows support for the idea in general, and solidarity for the specifics of it?
The lindens have tossed it back into our court without giving us a raquet to return it back to them. “I think this is an important topic to debate, but isn’t a ‘feature’ in the sense that it will require development time. I’m going to close it here, but I’m happy to discuss the topic further in other venues”. It’s been discussed in the forums. It’s been discussed in-world. Where are the other venues that you’re willing to discuss this with us, Phillip? And, if you truly are willing to discuss them with us, how willing will you be to implement basic ideas of user rights in your game, especially if those rights receive a mandate from the voting userbase?
Overall, the Linden response is “Sorry, it has merit, but this is a feature suggestion area, and technically this isn’t a feature, it’s policy. You’ll have to discuss this elsewhere”
Only there currently is no *feature* whereby policy can be voted on by the populace and be put forth for the lindens for consideration.
Seems to me the next logical step would be to put the ball back into the Linden court again. Fill out a Feature Suggestion to “Implement a *Feature* whereby *Policies* can be recommended to the Lindens via a voting system from the residents. This would be *similiar* to the Features Voting section, only it would be for *Policy* recommendations instead of features.”
I don’t see this happening anytime soon, nor unfortunately do I see the Secondlife game developing into a metaverse anytime soon.
Mr Fairplay
Sep 14th, 2005
I’m not going to say much at this point in time. I only have one main thing to say which is SL’s very own orginal slogan:
“Viva La Revolution!”
“Viva Le Second Life.”
The start of the “new way” is starting to take shape on the very minds and hearts of SL’s denizens.
It’s time we take a stand together agaisnt the Dictatorship SL currently is. And attempt to fix matters for the better, and not soly for the individual but for us all.
I only hope that enough voices will group together. Forming that will be the begginings of the new way.
I can only wish us the best of luck, and I shall offer my best of efforts along with my voice in contribution to the new way.
I shall keep everyone informed. That I can promise you! It’s late here so I am also going to wish you all a very good nite!
TrannyPet Barmy
Sep 14th, 2005
Prok – “For the life of me, I don’t know why Trannypet natters on and on ……….” – isn’t that the pot calling the kettle black Prok ? Especially coming from the man with a word count possibly in the billions and a content count of almost zero. Prok, if you went and read http://www.SecondCentral.com , you’d see “i told you so” was correct, and some time before MJW or Kremlinden was around, and to be totally honest, it would appear that SecondCentral is some what more organised than you and friends, and the only thing to date that is looking capable of changing anything for the better !!(thanks to all those out there that have contributed and made it all come togethor)
It’s idiots like you that have caused the MJW to fall, and more than likely you will do the same of KremLinden with your incessant pedantic argueing. Like i said previously, these groups need solidarity and union of action if they wish to acheive anything, and all the while there are idiots like yourself around, trying desperately hard to stand out from the crowd, with insistance on constant argueing against the grain for no other reason than to acheive this, these groups will get no where. Which is more important to you Prok ? The spotlight you seem so intent on constantly occupying ……….. or doing something to make the metaverse a better place ?
Hint: dont use such huge analogies that go away from the point, a) no one wants to read a 2000 word analogy when 20 will get the point across more precisely b) people look at consistantly long posts as a chore, not a pleasure.
Ben – Whats the problem ? You’re banned ? Not the end of the world is it ? You people didn’t want to listen when i was in the game, why should you want to listen now ? I think i know ………. and that’s why you’re banned
When i wish to speak with any of you, i’ll email you. Alternatively you could use the-cloak like the rest of those at LindenLab do 
– LOL what ? You didn’t think we checked/monitored logs ?
TrannyPet Barmy
TrannyPet Barmy
Sep 14th, 2005
Oh and Prok, you only have to watch the SuperFox Show that you were on to see who the “natters on and on” !!! It was only out of politeness i didn’t ask you to leave 1/2 way through that show. Any one who wants to see for themselves, its on http://www.superfoxtv.com under the archives for Super Fox Show.
Seriously, for every question i asked him, i got around about 20 mins of constant drivel, speculation, and his conspiracy theories, with, if i was lucky, 10% of it being relevant to the question that was asked !!!
Finally, LOL, when asked if he could back up any of his claims, his response was something along the lines of “you need to go ask around for yourself”, in effect “No i cant, its all just hear say and speculation” LMAO
TrannyPet Barmy
Prokofy Neva
Sep 14th, 2005
Unhygienix, you’ve accurately identified the problem, but unfortunately, the solution you and others have identified is also one they’re busy cooking up and coopting, so you’ve fed them now something they can cite as “coming from the residents”. They’ve indicated that are is a whole area of policies that fall outside of “game features” that they are willing to discuss in “other venues”. In fact, they *are* discussing them in meetings they’ve all just had with first the controversial Metaverse Justice Watch, then the limp Residents Action Committee, then the coopted Community Round Table sponsored at Pathfinder’s house. Philip or Robin or both were present at all these venues.
And the message they had basically was: get your act together and make something that represents the whole SL population and devise a process for vetting proposals among yourselves that you can show has legitimacy and we’ll keep talking to you. Interestingly, Philip had the insight to double back on that later and indicate that he couldn’t impose this demand of “representationalism” on the public — I’ll say, given that he handily discounted centuries of representative democracy as the insitution of civilization!
The Lindens *are already* talking about a policy proposal voting system and that’s why we have to be worried. Try to think this through. The voting system as it is has numerous problems. First, it only produced a Pony for the Welcome Area and languished for months. Now, after some public pressure, the Lindens burned through the list and have come up with a few things they’re doing like removing officer recall by anonymous members and at least acknowledging others. We’ll have to see the final cleaned-up version but in the meeting with Philip Monday, the issue I raised is: who is going to prioritize and make coherent all this plethora of numerous proposals of varying degrees of coherence? There will only be hundreds and thousands more coming, and it will fill up not only with idiocies like pandastrong’s proposition called “Junk Slider” to give every male avatar unlimited dick size (let’s hope it stops at the boundaries of a sim at least) — but with good proposals that get buried under all the silly or incoherent ones.
We’ve got a system that has enabled more then 4000 people to vote on 360 things (I’ll go find the exact figures but it was about that) with perhaps 4 of them actually passed — that’s already a greater percentage that the forum-FIC-five–percent. OK, even allowing for spoiled ballots, alts and “family voting,” subs voting like their doms told them, etc., it’s pretty significant for this fledgling experiment. But it produces a morass of topics, interests, and personalities. Some people buy Metadverse ads and get in your face with their pet project. Others put the prop numbers on their siggies. Not everyone has even used all their votes among those who vote (I know I gave up after several hours of trying to make sense of all the disperate proposals). Under these circumstances, far more exaggerated than in RL, whoever has the viral cut-and-paste stamina, whoever shouts loudest, whoever figures out what really wins with the Lindens will win. In fact, those especially skilled at pre-anticipating the Lindens’ little pet projects and ingratiating themselves to them with doable propositions will emerge as the people’s choice. Meh.
Philip replied to me that it would be “dangerous” to centralize the digesting function of this board in the Lindens. I couldn’t agree more. It’s likely a better idea to have residents do this — yet like a lot of other players, I find myself trusting biased Lindens more than I trust biased fellow players. What will happen is that others will arise to digest all the proposals and the community will either trust their abilities or not, but most people will not be able to take the time to tell. No doubt one of the usual selfless efficient busybodies who appear all the time in this game to enhance their reputations will take on this chore. In fact, I may get busy myself on this just to prevent the tekkies, under the guise of doing something technical, from taking this over and simply dumping lots of proposals they don’t like. I think it would be great, for example, if various parties were now to emerge that picked up this digesting function and began to articulate platforms made up of sections of the propositions taken as bundles. That would be a rational next step — and having traditional citizens’ movements, parties, groups — even, gasp, a government would be a rational and traditional way to handle the problem of how to find the voice of a diverse population, articulate it, and have it heeded.
Instead, because the Lindens are nay-saying all these centuries of human experience and brushing them aside with the usual tekkie abandon and arrogance, what they’re likely to do is graft on to this already cumbersome Rube Goldberg features-voting machine requiring a significant serial-processing, administrative bottleneck in the form of top Lindens to “clear it,” and put in something just like what Unhygienix is saying. It will be double or triply hard to write coherent policy proposals given how hard it is even to draft coherent requests on changes to group tools that everyone can grasp.
Worse, some supposedly “unbiased” or “impersonal” method will be found, i.e. “let’s dump anything that doesn’t get 50 votes” to screen out “undesirables”. And someone could put up a proposal like “limit the amount of land any one resident can buy” and get it passed and put, say, Anshe Chung out of business. Many would cheer. Until they woke up the next day and the Lindens had to do less with less because they didn’t have the income. All the people bitching about Anshe Chung were never themselves able to band together in purchasing cooperatives to take over sims and share tier.
The Lindens are then faced with loss of a chief source of income in their business and loss of face in the world at large where they have touted the free-market business qualities of this game. What, it turns out it’s a collective farm because the 10 percent of socialists with time on their hands in the game could get a vote passed while others were asleep? This is precisely the sort of thing that Anshe means by raising the issue of “how to protect minorities”.
If the Lindens start making a game world like that, where the 5 or 10 percent of tekkie socialist utopianists and communards who hate land dealing and commerce (except their own, of course) can prevail over hordes of ordinary people with more ordinary capitalist, democratic and liberal values (though not articulated), many will head for the doors. It’s not free. It’s a collective farm in the sky. Who wants to live on a collective farm in the sky?
The problems the Lindens and the community will face are the same the world over: how a liberal democratic “enlightened” intelligentsia that has more liberal ideas about how to run a society at large, i.e. everything from private property and free enterprise to free speech to abortion rights and banning the death penalty, will face a less-liberal or even profoundly conservative masses. This is one of the reasons why you have representative democracy organized in parties and parliaments.
So before we handily turn over to the Lindens yet another tekkie tool for controlling us even better and more subtly, I want to ask a LOT of questions about this idea that Unhygenienix thinks he had on his own (and didn’t realize they had long before you getting ready to coopt). Who gets to code it? Under what scrutiny? Who will decide on things like limits of proposal per person? Can groups or just individuals make proposals? Who will decide that the magic number is for votes to get a proposal to stay? Whose proposal gets to be viewed on the website first? Who gets to frame the proposals? How will the public get educated about proposals? What sort of transparency will there be on the very process among the Lindens to occur to vet these proposals among themselves?
The saddest thing about all of this is that the people who are the most despotic and most eager to control others and filter their influence throughout the game will be able to tout this technological wonder as “direct democracy” that they think gets around “the tyrants” — who will be the very people questioning really how democratic and open the system is and how much it can really protect the values of a liberal democratic society. I have only one word for you: Algeria.
Prokofy Neva
Sep 14th, 2005
Also, Aimee’s cunningly “touching” ascribing-of-good-will to this idea of “happy to talk in other venues” covers up the harsh reality of their really being no other venue except endless town halls where Lindens cut-and-paste pre-cooked answers to filtered questions, or the more free-flowing but still choreographed round tables or discussions with groups.
Moreover, Aimee can happily leave such vital matters to “other venues” that are non-existence because there isn’t really any policy or power issue that Aimee really feels any need to question, being as she is at the top of the heap already and knows which side her bread is buttered on. Marilyn is right, they don’t have to do squat. The fact is, however, their rhetoric about making a “country” and such will paint them into this corner where people will begin to make the reasonable demands you make on a government.
I also find touching Seldon’s belief that “policy voting” which Robin removed from features voting is just another “thingie” that you can just put in another “mechanism”. Obviously, Robin took policy questions out of the morass of features-voting because policy has to do with the very power equation of the entire set-up which you can’t let the customers touch without losing control of the very product itself — unless anybody forgot for a moment that we aren’t in a country, but a game made by an entertainment company.
For example, the Lindens have a policy now to ban completely from the world itself, i.e. from the game/platform of SL, anyone permabanned from the forums. Remember? Do you really think they’re going to reverse that? I think we should actually test their willingness to put policies in a voting mechanism just like more bland and toothless features changes but what will happen there is that the aggressive-obedient majority of at least the Forum FIC we’re seeing now will start in with the usual “well it’s their company and everything is gravy on top of the amazing privileges they already give you” blah blah. Anyone with basic liberal democrativ values knows that their policy of linking forums banning and world banning is wrong, because it would separate someone from their inventions or creations or property on speech grounds, and that’s wrong — it’s wrong in RL and wrong in simulated life. Indeed, I suspect Lindens themselves know it’s wrong but they couldn’t think of how else to tame this monster they’ve created on the forums.
50 well-organized aggressively obedient fanboyz will be able to muster up a posse and sink a proposal like that started even in earnest with significant support. They’ll be able to do this very handily because we live in an authoritarian society without freedom of the press, with forums that are biased and unevenly enforced as to the TOS and certainly not free, without any mass media that can really inform the population, and without a free, independent and accountable judicial system where people can face their accusers before a competent judge and independent jury of their peers and appeal the known charges against them.
The horrid nightmare that they are creating in this world under the guise of bleeding-edge technological advancement sometimes makes me lie away at night and cry.
Prokofy Neva
Sep 14th, 2005
I didn’t realize you were also the SuperFox guy? Are you saying you were banned on one alt and came back into the game on another? Nice job. And my transcript is actually a good thing to take a look at to refute your specious claims, especially once you strip away the idiocy at the beginning with some guy clowning around on the set and your own inane remarks.
It’s up to a good journalist to interrupt a guest on a talk show and get them on point if the host feels they aren’t — in the absence of any journalistic legwork by a host, any guest will just keep filling up the airtime — you can’t blame them. And what I did, asswipe, as anyone can see, is not say “I can’t back up my claims”. Not at all. I urged you to be a good journalist and not just listen to my side of the story on various issues, but to go and *investigate it for yourself* with those whom I was criticizing, to give them a chance to tell their story. That was just a good piece of advice.
Geez, you’re more of a blithering idiot than I realized. I think that the fact that I had to listen to a tongue-lashing from SLTV (which was covering you covering me) after this interview and be berated for “knocking the Lindens who provide me this opportunity” (which actually wasn’t the case) ought to be proof enough of the validity and pointedness of the points I was making.
Prokofy Neva
Sep 14th, 2005
And regarding the groups, as anyone can see, Anshe Chung split off Metaverse Justice Watch and shook loose not only me but people like Hiro Queso because she’s unable to share power and be accountable in a group for her actions, but can only deal with bussed-in tenants, cronies, loyalists, and FIC flatterers and fauners with temporary-alliance agendas like Aimee. (Read the Concerned Residents group forum on the SL forums for a fascinating insight on how the voting/election issue continues to exasperate this group and questions of legitimacy are still being vigorously raised.)
MJW then turned into a political theater of the absurd because Jauani used it to posture and heckle and brought in bands of hecklers from the forums. I’m not interested in leading a mass movement or protogovernment myself, and I think there is a role for small but articulated groups with clear, principled agendas so I hope that the flawed game tools and ridiculous environment of SL notwithstanding, I’ll get to put something like that together.
Your notion of solidarity unions being able to come together and grow at this particular political moment and historical juncture is flawed. There’s no basis for a mass movement and power is not only very firmly in the hands of the oligarchs, they use their loyalist oprichina enforcer-type class to keep power dispersed and off balance among other groups in the game. Only some overarching common theme that could link very disperate interest groups and alternative lifestyle groups across the grid could succeed, and I’m not seeing one because even very basic quality–of-life issues like bounce scripts can’t get the consensus they need to be a successful ‘game feature’ or ‘policy” (and bounce scripts is a good example of a feature that morphed into an offlimits policy once the FIC got their hands on it in the IRC channel).
I took a look at secondcentral.com and was less than impressed. The forums look to be of even lower grade that sluniverse.com, it looks to be your personal bully-pulpet, and it seems like there’s great fun you’re all having by doing things like posting exploits which I’m not sure I can condone. How old are you again?
TrannyPet Barmy
Sep 14th, 2005
Yes Prok, SuperFox was also me, i am all around
Any which way you like to twist it Prok, you basically said when asked if you could show evidence to support as you claim, “you need to go ask around for yourself”. If you had *anything* to support what you were claiming, and show it to be any more than *your* speculations, rumour spreading, and manipulation, you would have said something then. If you can back up your claims, then why dont you ? “i took a berating from the lindens and sltv” ……. hardly proof of anything Prok,
a) we only have your say so that that even happened
b) even if this did happen, what exactly does it prove ? and how ?
Why dont you give up the rumour spreading and manipulation, and give us the hard evidence, *IF* you have any, trying to hang proof on one claim throught the supposed happening of some other event is not proof of any kind, and to be honest if you think otherwise, then damn, you’re calling me an idiot ???
The Fox may well have *spoken* like a fool, but he sure asked the right question there didn’t he
Got you to say what he suspected to.
You may have looked at secondcentral.com, and in some desperate bid to forward your arguement and accussation here are bound to say you were less than impressed. Oh do let me respond ……… i wonder if you’re as impressed as i am with your lack of willing to back up the claims and accussations you are consistantly making through out the majority of your posts. I’m sure there are many amongst the readers of your endless ramblings, who, can see just as clearly as i can that you’re nothing more than a rumour spreading fool, quite likely in an attempt to control the SL environment to your own personal gain, which is more than likely what caused MJW to break down, your endless self centered rubbish.
With regards to the MJW Prok, i have it quite good grounds that Hiro actually left the group due to your completely selfish self centered nature and idiocies
Not making a claim, but, just letting you know that i know 
Any way Prok, it seems pointless getting into some slanging festival, since it seems you have nothing to say that you can back up, and outside of that, not alot more than petty insult. You may be able to fool some of the people some of the time Prok, with your content empty well presented over bloated words, however, all of the people all of the time ? No i dont think so.
BTW Prok, who made any claim about being a good journalist ? I simply pointed out, that due to my politeness, you ranted endless bs, mostly unrelated to anything asked of you, for over an hour on live tv. Then when asked if you could support any of it, replied as stated above. I’d say you look the fool matey not me
Now may be a good time to start supporting your claims Prok
lol
cheers
TrannyPet Barmy
TrannyPet Barmy
Sep 14th, 2005
For those who wish to cast a vote, or a comment for that matter, i’ve put up a simple survey relating to this issue on http://www.SecondCentral.com
Maybe if enough folks actually vote on the matter and air their opinions, LL may actually listen. I some how doubt it, but you never know, if there are enough in number, well they just might.
cheers
TrannyPet Barmy
pandastrong
Sep 14th, 2005
Wow, Prok. Very concise!
montserrat
Sep 14th, 2005
i am beginning to think that my reading comprehension skills are starting to fade. i can’t seem to make it from the beginning to end of prok’s rants anymore.
prok. please edit you. prok i don’t get how come lincoln can write the gettysburg address in regular words and a couple paragraphs and it is starting to take you the whole oxford dictionary to say something that won’t matter in two weeks.
please help me, prok. brevity is your friend.
-m
Prokofy Neva
Sep 14th, 2005
mont, these posts are actually shorter than what I used to post on the SL forums or even my blog, and it’s just the tiny print and strange narrow column of this really ugly-ass blog that makes it hard to read. Curious that nobody rants on Trannypet for an even longer and certainly much more incoherent text.
Trannypet/Superfox, um, just WHAT are you talking about? What statement out of the hour of statements I made are you finding somehow “unsupportable”? Just take one, and let’s work it. Honestly, you’re not making sense. I raised the issue of Jeska modeling for example. Was there something about that issue you didn’t agree about? And many other issues — but please, pick one.
I was debating whether to publish the transcripts of first Fox TV then the rant from the SLTV gal, but I think maybe it might be useful. I don’t mean to single her out, but I do think it’s indicative of this problem of trying to have socalled “public TV” in Kremlindenland.
Prokofy Neva
Sep 14th, 2005
You know, um, one of the reasons it’s hard to take you seriously is that you’ve adopted this utterly fake and silly persona of a French box like the cartoon Asterix or something — not quite sure what the reference is — where you talk fake bad English like a “foreigner” and just have a rolling stream of nonsense spewing out all the time. So that’s one of the difficulties of trying to be on your show. You also have all kinds of dumb stuff around like cows and guys talking about their pieces and stuff. Then, in asking me questions, it sounded to me like you were either stupid, AFK, distracted, or not very filled with ideas. So I just laid out my ideas. Whatever, anyone reading the transcript can judge for themselves.
I can’t help thinking that prime indication of your um lack of foresight and brilliance could be in outing your own alt on this venture in a way that might get you into trouble if any Lindens are perusing the SLH–and we can see from Ben’s comment that they do check in. So if they banned you on one account they may ban you merely for trying to come in and get around their ban.
Joe Public
Sep 14th, 2005
I don’t think it’s possible for prok to write anything less than a full diatribe.
Once he hits the keyboard he’s like a dog licking its own arsehole…just can’t stop working that tongue to get one last nugget of delicious prokofy choco goodness:-)
Not!
The arrogance of his recent hectoring posts is astounding.
Honestly…comparing a virtual toyworld playskool antics to the horrors of Algeria (1 million + RL deaths) … you should be ashamed.
Get .a.fucking.life.
Prokofy Neva
Sep 15th, 2005
Um, I have a fucking life, “Public,” I don’t need to “get one”. And the comparison of the Algerian situation isn’t comparing 40,000 spoiled middle class people, mainly young Americans dialing up to a playworld, with the millions of RL appallingly horrible deaths in massacres — although I realize these things are too subtle for you.
It’s comparing the *problem* of radical core groups who can come to power in a society by demanding elections, insisting on liberla values being deployed for their illiberal aims, and getting that insincerely placed demand by their claims to restore order, help the economy, etc. Such manipulators of the very features of democracy often enough support that they could actually win democratic elections, in the sense of a popular vote, but then institute a society that would turn the universally accepted notion of democracy itself on its ear, to violate most basic rights, including equality of women and freedom of speech and of course basic notions like freedom from torture or extrajudicial execution.
So the government at the time, itsself abusive and riddled with corruption and responsible for massacres, too, stopped elections then prompting years of civil war and terrorism as those people who were done out of the elections used violence to fight the state. It’s like the problem of Hitler coming to power in democratic elections the murdering millions, just a fresher example. I don’t fear making analogies of the problems of democracy and terrorism in SL in work with groups because they hold merely as *analagous problems* and are therefore interesting to solve — we see how people use griefing, heckling, packing of meetings, bussing in uninformed, etc. etc. just like all the Bolsheviks and Nazis and others over the years have manipulated elections and open societies to in fact turn them into their opposite.
You’re oh-so-concerned about the millions massacred in a foreign country, but you can’t condemn the roots of the same thing in the human heart in a game — by dismissing it as a game.
Joe Public
Sep 15th, 2005
God, you are such an arrogant turdmunching hectoring arsehole.
[Just taking a little lesson from the prok book of putdowns to open my rebuttal]
Do you really think you are the only one on planet earth that understands the extremeeeeeelly subtle point that human nature is at the heart of all? Well, duh! [Prokofyism #2]
Power, control, desire..a major revelation into human motivation…..whoop de fucking doo…come on down prok and get your phd in behavioural science!
At a very high conceptual level there is obviously a correlation between human behaviour patterns in toygame power plays and rl power plays (duh #3) but to directly link the two contexts at a lower level is…well…just plain dumbfuck stupid as you can link anything in life to illustrate this, going back into the mists of time.
Many, many people are using collaborative virtual environments every day in productive work based contexts without any of the issues you describe. To ascribe formative nation state political machinations to a virtual context is not only unsubtle, but a very simplistic and amateurish way of analysing the evolution of metaverse power structures. There are many elements of the metaverse that can and will break traditional contrstraints of RL command and control, not the least being the ability to instantly reconfigure the environment at mulitple conceptual and physical levels. We have only just begun to explore ways of collaborating.
It’s interesting to see you state “I don’t fear making analogies of the problems of democracy and terrorism in SL in work with groups because they hold merely as *analagous problems*” after you have stated sooooo many times that using RL contexts to support SL arguments has no relevance.
“Do as I say, not as I do” seems to be your motto….I wonder where that comes from?
Joe Public
Sep 17th, 2005
Yoo hoo..proky?
Are you there?
What’s the matter?
Kitchen too hot for you?
Time to change the subject again?
Prokofy Neva
Sep 17th, 2005
No, it’s not unsubtle. It’s pretty accurate. The problem that causes an Algeria or Russia is the same problem that causes the problem with democracy in SL — your liberal values expouding freedoms are exploited by illiberal actors who are bent on taking away freedoms. Pretty basic.
You really are an intellectual mediocrity, Public. I fully stand by my statement that using RL credentials and personal information about yourself is untenable in SL as a venture, people spend it as the coin of the realm but I don’t believe it to be legal tender. The root of that argument is that the RL claims people make are uncheckable, and their RL abilities are often irrelevant in SL. That’s a statement about individual real lives. That’s different than taking concepts and historical lessons from RL situations from countries and wars, etc. because a) they are checkable as known historical events and b) they are relevant because one can see the patterns. If the difference between these two things eludes you, I throw up my hands because of your mediocrity again.
TrannyPet Barmy
Sep 17th, 2005
it is it is waaah waaaaah it is it is you has to beleive me, i cant prove jack, but HONEST IT ISSSSSSSSSSSSS
lmao Prok, be quiet man
TrannyPet Barmy
Joe Public
Sep 17th, 2005
“a) they are checkable as known historical events”
And that is the basis of your superior intellectual credentials!!!
A fucking amoeba even knows that so called “history” is suspect at best…usually skewed and manipulated to support vested interests.
What’s a good example?
hmmm…let me see…what’s that book the god botherer’s keep thumping on?
The Bible? ooo…yessssss….110% certifiable hysterically accurate!!!
Who invented the telephone? Quick now? Alexander G. Bell? Dong! wrong…
You truly are a superior intellectual…I prostrate myself before your almighty wisdom, o keeper of the virtual moral light.
*snort*
Prokofy Neva
Sep 17th, 2005
Um, history is subjective and objective both, sure, that’s known. But the issues that occurred in Hitler’s Germany and Algeria aren’t viewed as so subjective an interpretation that we have to dissolve into some Derrida-madness here and not take what is accepted and universally known in the civilized world, namely that Hitler used “democratic elections” to come to power, and this is one of the great vulnerabilities of democracy, and that in Algeria, extremists invoking democracy could shame a repressive government which then prevented them from coming to power with democratic legitimacy but these acts unleashed civil war with horrific massacres for years. So these are pretty well accepted and known facts, and again, what’s being compared here are RL events that reveal the flaws of democracy with SL events which reveal the same flaws of democracy.
I dunno, I guess these larger philosopohical issues are lost on you and it’s kinda pointless to try to talk.
jauani
Sep 17th, 2005
wow is that what they teach you in the idiot’s guide to WW2?
Joe Public
Sep 17th, 2005
“I dunno, I guess these larger philosopohical issues are lost on you and it’s kinda pointless to try to talk.”
It is when you take such a simplistic view of Hitlers rise to power and the even more complex Algerian situation and apply it to a commerical enterprise that is entirely composed of voluntary membership.
Let’s analyse Hitlers rise to power and see how many real correlates exist between the reality and your SL fantasy of tagging Phillip Linden as Adolf Hitler and SL as the weimar republic/Algerian situation.
http://www.johndclare.net/Weimar7.htm is a GCSE revision site on Hitlers rise to power. I fail to see much correlation, but I no doubt you will reinterpret/revise it to fit your theory…just like a true historian.
Algeria in some ways is even more complex.
http://www.country-studies.com/algeria/government-and-politics.html
There is a nice list at the bottom where you can check off the SL examples you keep hectoring on about.
The point being that a huge amount of complex social and economic factors existed to give rise to these situations that do not exist in SL, which is, above all, a voluntary environment.
You can leave freely at any time, prok.
Personally I think the whole notion of “creating a virtual country” is a flawed idea given the plain obvious differences between RL and Virtual existance. It’s going to be hard to be innovative in this regard in the metaverse if people keep trying to duplicate reality….and even more so making dumb emotive comparisons to RL historical situations of minimal relevance.
Prokofy Neva
Sep 17th, 2005
Philip Linden isn’t Hitler, and I didn’t say he is. SL is not Nazi Germany or Algeria and I didn’t say it is. Threats to democracy are vividly illustrates in the Nazi or Algerian situation, however. Everybody knows that Hitler rose to power through elections, that elections in and of themselves are no guarantor of liberal outcomes. I have a feeling if I said “the sky is blue” you’d find a Wikipedia.org entry to explain that it is really just the artificial effect of the human eye’s processing of light or something.
These same kinds of threats to democracy exist in our game world by people who use the virtual equivalent (not moral equivalent, not real equivalent) of Bolshevism or terror which is griefing and heckling and forcing people into silence or disrupting a group to make it unworkable with all kinds of antics packing meetings, busing in officers, etc.
I’m not the one who dreamed up the country stuff. That was your friend Phil Linden. SL doesn’t really feel like a country to me or even a city, it’s more like a reservation, I guess, or some kind of duty-free liquor store zone on the border.
Joe Public
Sep 17th, 2005
“These same kinds of threats to democracy exist in our game world by people who use the virtual equivalent (not moral equivalent, not real equivalent) of Bolshevism or terror which is griefing and heckling and forcing people into silence or disrupting a group to make it unworkable with all kinds of antics packing meetings, busing in officers, etc.
Just because you pissed off a bunch of people with your deliberatly inflammatory emotive trolling and they punched you back in the nose is no reason to start calling the general internut fucktard population of greifers a nascent nazi political machine aiming to take over lindenLand.
“I’m not the one who dreamed up the country stuff.”
mb not – but you certainly jumped on the country bandwagon (backpeddling now are we?), beating your little moral drum with chicken little cries of “The Bolsheviks are coming”…no hang, it’s the Nazi’s now…shit, it waz the algerians…nooo, wait, it’s the Judean peoples front aiming to depose the…oops, I meant the peoples front of judea…those wiccan pagan bustards who interrupted my last rant.
Tolerance of diversity of views is crucial to a healthy environment, but if you deliberatly punch buttons for your own entertainment…don’t complain when you get punched back.
You need to find more intelligent ways of getting your points across. (and yes, you do have some valid points at times…pity you destroy the impact with inane arguments)
chris
Sep 20th, 2005
I wish people cared this much about our rights IRL…
Urizenus
Sep 20th, 2005
Why can’t we care about both?
Prokofy Neva
Sep 20th, 2005
Once again, I’ve saved Uri’s ass here by appearing to be more liberal or more wacky or whatever than his own newspaper. Notice that it wasn’t me — the nutter who uses Russian analogies all the time — who called our favourite socializing monetarized platform provider “Kremlinden Lab”. Damn, that was brilliant. I wish I’d thought of it. But in fact, it’s actually not the kind of lampooning that I do. I guess because I know what a vast difference there is between the RL Kremlin, which would even today have long since thrown most of the SL population and its works out on its ass (and the Herald on top of the heap) versus a laid-back but intensely dedicated Californian utopian social and computer engineering corporation. They are different.
Uri called names to make a typical tabloid paper kinda thing — and more power to him. Nobody said, gasp, Uri, ZOMG what a fucktard you are calling the Lindens the Kremlin. Nobody. Instead, when I made an analogy to the patterns and mechanisms between the Nazi, Algerian, Russian kinds of RL situations that crop up, I got all kinds of tinfoil hats thrown at me and screams that I was calling Phil Linden Hitler. Please. You’re just covering up your own guilty tracks with stuff like this. Jauani even had the temerity to claim that my Cliff Notes of history — Hitler coming to power on the wave of a democratic election — was somehow “wrong”. Geez. You don’t know where to start with opportunistic hijinxers like this.
The point is, we live in a closed society where the controllers have a loyalist class who not only do their bidding, they serve as informal — and sometimes formal — enforcers with the rest of the population. That’s why you get all this FIC arrogantly telling everybody they can’t have lobbies, or planning for more punitive policies against freebie-sellers and the building of prisons and so on.
I call this situation again and again. But I didn’t exaggerate it in the way Uri did — a legitimate means of poking fun at a tyrant is to use exaggeration, satire, sarcasm. Instead I made a valid analogy — just as in RL there are extremist and fantatical groups and idealogues who exploit democracy to undo it, so in SL we have the same thing, even if those people are just ordinary banking clerks, students, and housewives by day and aren’t really “evil”.
The Metaverse Messenger had a more neutral, journalistic approach to this story in which they interviewed Robin Linden. Go read it at http://www.metaversemessenger.com I think it’s the current issue. She explained that saying they don’t “do” stuff like a bill of rights is just a way of expressing that it can’t be put in some kind of ordinary development queue. Sounds good so far, but then she undoes what might have been a better spin on this story by saying that while she recognizes there might be some validity to codifying rights of residents and that residents want this, if freedom of speech is going to be used to make personal attacks “we can’t have this.” Of course, their notion of not tolerating “personal attacks” means letting the kind of appalling nasty posters who post against me here at SLH to have a field day, while I’m banned because I write that Aimee’s name sounds like a prom queen’s name. Oh, well.
Joe Public
Sep 20th, 2005
“while I’m banned because I write that Aimee’s name sounds like a prom queen’s name.”
Fact: you were banned because you were an arsehole who disregarded the well known guidelines of intelligent forum participation, which accumulated over a long period of time and eventually came to a head resulting in you being booted. I’m surprised they let it go on as long as it did.
Are you that fucking dumb (or more likely egotistical) that you still can’t accept the facts of the situation?
One of the facts of life, proky, is that sometimes you just have to admit you were wrong..hard to do, but suck it up.
“Jauani even had the temerity to claim that my Cliff Notes of history – Hitler coming to power on the wave of a democratic election – was somehow “wrong”.”
Jauani is right…your statement is a simplistic interpretation and even a cliff notes version must make reference to the elements which gave rise to the so-called “democratic elections” and surrounding socioeconomic context.
http://www.johndclare.net/Weimar7.htm
Hitlers election, like your booting, was the result of a loooong chain of events…to ignore them and highlight only one aspect that supports your current situation/argument is fallacious.
“The jawbone of an ass is just as dangerous a weapon today as in Sampson’s time.”
— Richard Nixon
http://www.don-lindsay-archive.org/skeptic/arguments.html
Hayden hedges
Oct 6th, 2005
It never ceases to amaze me how people who pay to use a platform provided by a private company suddenly believe they are entitled to free speech, free money, or free anything. It’s a privately owned world and we all pay for the privilige of using it. Get real guys, this isn’t a democracy and judging by many of the more vocal members, I pray it never is.
No matter what SL means to you, no matter what your financial or emotional involvement, SL is just a game. And as for the whole ‘LL have got you by the balls’ crap…How does that work? If you don’t like it simply leave. Would your life fall apart without an SL component?
I’ve read provky’s comments over time on the boards and now here, and I must confess as to not having read so much hot air and drivel since I last bothered to read anything by a politician. For the sake of all that is holy man, get some porn, start making ships from matchsticks, do anything but please stop writing paranoid novels with every post.
Prokofy Neva
Oct 6th, 2005
Who says that just because we step across the threshold of a virtual world that we lose all our universal human rights? Who says the metaverse gets to cancel out the universe?
Hayden hedges
Oct 6th, 2005
Whoever owns the world (Servers). Welcome to the real world.
Joe Public
Oct 6th, 2005
In a commercial service on signup you ackowledge you will comply with the service providers TOS. If you don’t like their TOS, don’t sign up…or leave if you find you don’t like it. It’s not like the rl universe where so many people are simply powerless to make even a simple choice like that.
Proky is the sort of hectoring busybody who would sign up to a BDSM club as a gimp, knowing full well what they do and then try and start a “free the gimp” movement…because he can.
There is no doubt a psychological profile for that behaviour.
Antje
Oct 7th, 2005
You got that right Joe, that is basically what the creep did in TSO within the Wiccan community, when he infiltrated it. He also impersonated Will Wright. One need not look too far. It’s all right here in this blog.
Prokofy is so obsessed by virtual worlds that he cannot distinguish the difference between them and reality anymore (if he ever could).
It’s doesn’t help when Philip makes statements about making a “country”. This causes Prokofy to become fraught with overblown righteousness, and to take market speak literally. “HUMAN RIGHTS!”
My RL partner is interning and finishing her master’s in marketing currently, so I see this type of market speak all the time. It’s definately to be taken with a HEAVY dose of reality. Unfortunately, there are folks out there who live in paranoid dioramas, and could probably find a way to politicize Toon Town over their ads.
“It’s true! Huey, Dewey and Louis are hectoring, pernicious, ficky facky tekky scripterwakky hedonitoons!”
It’s ok, he will eventually piss the Lindens off so much, especially Robin, that they will just ban his stupid ass altogether. I will sing a eulogy jam packed with festive joy that day.
Of course, he will probably read this and scream that he won’t be banned from SL in-world. Then I will point out, just as I did in the SL forums, as did several others, that we warned him if he kept being such a prevaricating shitstirrer, he would eventually be banned form the forums. Of course, back when he was rejecting those warnings, he puffed out his chest and said “I HAVE DONE NOTHING WRONG! I WILL NOT BE BANNED”
Yeah, we see how well that worked out for him.
Prokofy Neva
Oct 7th, 2005
The people in game companies who generate these kinds of TOS will gradually have to evolve to expanding them to include more RL universal rights — or fail, commercially and socially. It’s not up to us to adapt to their closed, totalitarian worlds, like other totalitarian entities in history they’ll be adapting to more democracy and openness. Nobody is powerless in a world where you pay real money for your business costs and make RL money profit.