The Alphaville Herald

Former JLU Member Speaks Out

by Alphaville Herald on 04/08/07 at 6:04 pm

anti-griefer Justice League Unlimited threatens privacy and act like griefers

by Nikola Shirakawa ex-JLU member

The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which – Animal Farm

Many people on SL have run into this group. The Justice League Unlimited – or JLU – has become one of the most well-known anti-griefer groups in the metaverse. Perception of the JLU differs depending on who you ask. Residents that have requested JLU help say they are every bit the superheroes they role play. The alleged goons and griefers such as the “Patriotic Nigras” – or PN – claim the JLU are sim-crashers that fire doomsday weapons at their enemies. Some land owners, such as Artemis Fate, say the JLU are a detriment to peace on the grid.

Before serious discussion about the JLU can be undertaken, it is important to know that not all of their actions are entirely public, and some of these shady choices could paint a very different picture indeed. To the public, they just swoop in to distress calls, talk down a griefer, or, in the most extreme cases, they call down the Lindens. Nothing wrong with that, right? But these are just the actions the public sees. What goes on when they retreat to their locked down sim, Asimov Park, the real story begins.

Let’s start by discussing the JLU Brainiac device. This little bot, attached to their avatars, connects to an external database that maintains a running record of avatars they have come in contact with. And I mean every avatar. Part of the script in their equipment automatically records the names of every Second Life resident, griefer, civilian, or even Linden. That’s right, if you’ve been next to them, they have your user name, and a unique key that acts on a similar level to that used by the Lindens to issue permabans.

An analysis of the script identifies the website, http://w-hat.com/name2key, where this key is obtained. That’s right, the JLU contacts the the W-Hat site to connect names with unique keys. Who gave them permission to collect screen names and keys like this? And what do they use this information for? Among other things, residents they have categorized as griefers, be they known PN alts, or just newbies who did not yet understand shooting people was against the rules, are scanned for at all times. If, by coincidence, one of these newbie shooters walks within range of a JLU member, the JLU member is immediately informed of this presence. Right to privacy? Not when the JLU is around.

Speaking of privacy, consider the JLU campaign against the PNs. Many feel the PN kids are a bad element, responsible for harassing users and crashing sims. With this as justification it seems the JLU sees no problem with its own sort of harassment, and more. On the external Brainiac database, there is a veritable treasure trove of personal information, especially when it comes to two of the PN leaders, N3X15 and mootykips. The JLU has currently on file for both of them, real life names, addresses, phone numbers, and ISP’s. For mootykips, they even have a photograph. This information is freely accessible to their group. As justification, the JLU says that one of their members, Kara Timtam, had her information spread on the PN boards. Talk about fighting griefing with griefing. It must be said that they have not personally contacted either of these people, but Kalel Venkman has confessed to harassing Verizon, N3X15′s service provider, in an attempt to shut him out of the Internet. Going beyond this to the PN as a whole, the JLU routinely listens to their IRC channels, and their Ventrilo and Skype channels, as well as every website they can find connected to the PN in the slightest way.

Of course, these kinds of wiretaps and information data mining without a warrant is more than reminiscent of the much derided Patriot Act. But there is one difference. The Patriot Act is used by sworn officers of the law, with a little thing called a badge. They have been granted the authority to do so by the an RL government. Who gave this authority to a bunch of roleplay superhero wannabes? When you have contact with a police officer, you have a right to get their badge number, and they can be reported to higher authorities. What does the JLU have? A bunch of comic book avatars, and self-appointed power. That’s right. They were given their power by themselves. When asked about the legality of these actions, Kalel Venkman said. “I’ve thought about that too, but I really want to get these guys, and I think you do too.”

It seems that Mootykips obtained information directly off of Venkman’s public web page, including, free to the world, an online resume, a photograph, and a contact number. This information was of course posted to the PN’s own wiki, and the Encyclopedia Dramatica for a short while. But as of recently, in an attempt to scare these children, Venkman has redirected the link to his online resume to the Department of Justice’s Computer Crimes reporting page. When it comes to dealing with the kiddies, Venkman is all for violating privacy, scanning the whois domain information. But when it comes to his public web page, obtaining documents he leaves open to the public is suddenly the most unforgivable crime. And that my friends, is the definition of hypocrisy. It seems Jor-El left one thing out of his teachings. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

Kalel Venkman signed up to Second Life midway through 2006. One of his earliest actions was to join a roleplaying group, the JLA, or Justice League of America. Right away, he wanted to be Superman, and set out to do just that. Shortly after, within a few weeks, according to Kalel’s own account, he and others were co-opted into being real superheroes, dealing with griefers. Most of this old JLA group obviously was not interested in such past times. What was the right action in this case? That’s right, kick them out, and hide the group, so no one could ever use it again for role playing, and create a new group just for anti-griefing. Several months later, some newbies who were not approved for Kalel’s standards to use the name of Justice League created their own JLU group. Once again Kalel began conniving the people into his group for the purposes of shutting the other down. This led to Kalel and a few of his flunkies singlehandedly creating every single possible Justice League Derivative and hiding them away, so no one else could be Justice League. Why? So no one hurts their good name. Never mind that not one of the JLU is a DC employee or affiliate. Sure, they are all flagrant copyright violators, but they have a duty to make sure no other comic book fans that they may dislike use their good name.

This hatred of competition has even spread to older more established groups such as the Green Lantern Core led by Cid Jacobs. Kalel has expressed designs on creating his own power rings to drive out the GLC. There is already a hidden group title in the JLU known as JLU Green Lantern. The JLU’s most recent development, the multi-tool known as Solaris, was explicitly mentioned as competition to the GLC power rings, with Kalel on record as saying “Keep in mind, this is more progress than the GLC’s rings have had in six months”. On the Brainiac wiki, there are dozens of archived GLC internal documents, including the groups parliamentary decisions and the operating manual for the power rings. It should come as little surprise, then, that the JLU is not on the GLC’s approved Green Lantern group list.

Venkman clearly has desires for the JLU to become the Linden’s official police force. Brainiac’s functions as of May, 2007 have the ability to keep tabs on Lindens. At a glance, the JLU has the ability to see which Lindens are online, without even being connected to the grid. In addition, they actually rank the Lindens on said database, choosing to pester those they feel are most likely to respond to them. Basically, to the Lindens that chose to not recognize their self-appointed authority, they are not good Lindens, and as such must blackballed for “unreliability”.

This blackballing to those that don’t recognize the fictional authority of the Justice League has even spread to large landowners such as Artemis Fate. Artemis Fate, who is in charge of the popular destination Nexus Prime among others, took offense at the JLU dealing with griefers in her territory. After she told me she would not tolerate anti-griefer forces, I immediately told Kalel that we were not to go there. Kalel of course, could not accept this, and had to force his views onto Artemis, who of course, was not reciprocal. This policy of intruding onto sims where they have not been invited has led to such events as a mass banning of JLU members from a Gorean sim last April. One of he newest features of SL has been to allow forwarding of Abuse Reports to Estate Managers on private islands, in lieu of forwarding to the Lindens. Rather than respect the wishes of the Estate Managers that have this policy in place, Kalel has ordered all JLU to retreat to JLU territory to file Abuse Reports.

“The problem with anti-griefers,” says Artemis Fate. “is they always turn into griefers themselves.”

While it is true that the JLU has never fired an orbiter, or a doomsday weapon, that does not mean they have not carried out similar actions. Take the case of Loki Buaku. Loki Buaku quickly made himself an enemy of the JLU, and as such, made it his mission to take them out. He did not undertake this mission by grabbing a gun and shooting up any JLU he could find, but by creating groups and spreading propaganda against them. Not against the ToS in the slightest. But this did not stop the JLU from acting against him. Upon finding his RP character was supposedly 15 years old, Kalel led a charge of JLU members to fire off Abuse Report after Abuse Report against him for this unforgivable grievance.

This vendetta behavior has even spread to sim owners. Take the case of Woodbury University. This sim, as you may know, was shut down by the Lindens for being a griefer base. What most people are not aware of, however is this was largely a charge lobbied by the JLU.

Within two days of learning of the site’s existence, the JLU was there in force to examine the site. Calls were made by Kalel to MichaelFrancis Linden, a Linden in personal contact with Venkman. Official JLU policies included swarming all places where their griefers were seen, and spying on their chat channels. Sometimes, they even went as far as dropping large invisible prims on the property to keep the greifers from entering their own builds. Keep in mind, this was not just in a sandbox that they happened to be, this was private property under the ownership of the so called greifers, and the JLU were the encroachers in this case. Not that private property holds much weight to Venkman and the JLU.

After seeing the full extent of the executive decisions and behaviors of the JLU, can much of a difference between them and the griefers they oppose actually be found? Their eye for an eye, fire with fire tactics, end up bearing little distinction form greifing itself. In the end, does the end really justify the means. Is it worth throwing away and sense of constitutionality, legality, privacy, or free expression, just to stop the grefiers? The majority of SL citizens have never seen a PN face to face. They have no real need for the superheroes in their day to day lives. But I’m willing to bet that a large chunk of them might have an issue with being in a database without their permission. I’d be willing to bet there’s quite a few people out there who would love to roleplay as Superman, or Batman, or Wonder Woman. There are even people that disagree with the JLU’s actions on a political basis. But if the JLU had their say, all of these groups would be silenced, and stricken from the grid. Does the L in JLU stand for Lords?