DiSSENTiON in SL
by Alphaville Herald on 20/04/08 at 10:06 am
YouTube communique warns of asset server attacks and malicious code
by Pixeleen Mistral, National Affairs desk
A new griefing group – “DiSSENTiON” – released several YouTube videos over the last week illustrating new weapons testing on help island, and warning of “ushering a new era of chaos into the virtual world of Second Life as a result of Linden Lab’s neglect towards it’s customers”. This appears to be the same group that attacked the I-World island event for 30 minutes Saturday.
would you like some self replicating megacubes with your concert – or your Help island?
DiSSENTiON claims of “attacking the asset servers using recursive llHttpRequests to the asset server URLs” may be hard to verify – are these problems enemy action – or Linden incompetence ? A larger question remains unanswered as well – after literally years of griefer attacks, is it simply impossible to protect the the Second Life platform from determined troublemakers? Some observers speculate that the Lab has been willing to tolerate a certain amount of griefing of the platform as a inexpensive way of enlisting the griefers in bug and exploit identification – but with a stagnant premium subscriber base the indirect costs of this sort of “free” bug testing could become significant.
At the Herald offices, we see all sorts of metaverse residents with issues – orphaned babyfurs, virtual child models with speech impediments, Gorean masters tracking runaway slaves, virtual land rental agents — everyone with their own idea of proper gameplay in Second Life. If DiSSENTiON is more than YouTube posturing, we may soon learn how well the new Havok 4 physics engine and in-world economy stands up to the play of disaffected residents as the level of alienation between the Lab and the players grows.
a massive campaign to systematically dismantle Second Life – to save it?
Transcript of DiSSENTiON’s message to the Lab:
Attention Linden Labs, DiSSENTiON has been watching you silently as you have become increasingly bold, ignoring the pleas of your customers while slowly destroying the platform known as Second Life.
We have emerged from the chaos as a result of growing fury among the masses. Your unveiling of the new Corporate SL combined with the sudden emergence of so called “Trademark Guidelines” has prompted the founding of a new organization.
DiSSENTiON has come forth to bare the burden of unleashing utter chaos across the grid. How events unfold from here is up to you.
You will abolish said trademark guidelines and make a public statement apologizing to your customers for your ineptitude within seven days, or else we will release our malicious code to the masses ushering in a new era of chaos.
Furthermore, you will abort your plans to close Second Life to the public. We know of these plans to make SL exclusive to real world businesses and we are revealing them publicly here today and in the attacks that will proceed this message.
At this very moment DiSSENTION programmers are developing new code to attack your asset servers and exploit numerous vulnerabilities in your platform. Furthermore, we will make the infamous program known as Copybot public to the masses in effect devastating your economy.
This is your one and only warning. You will learn the error of your ways or DiSSENTiON will launch a massive campaign systematically dismantling the virtual world known as Second Life.
Plot Tracer
Apr 24th, 2008
hmmm… your example of my front door is not apt in two ways- one – I would love u to paint it for me- don’t care about the colour. Secondly, we have small parcels of private property because of the “enclosure” of land by those who went on to be the aristocracy/”land owners” in the past. The privatisation of the web- ie the commercial exploitation and censorship of the web (and sl isa part of this) is sinister- and more sinister still is that people are easily persuaded of the “right” of these companies to do this. China may be a little ahead of our western governments in the shutting down of the web- but the active involvement of Google and IBM etc in that country shows how close to home this censorship really is.
SL may be small- but its owners have generated myths. The myth, for example, of “your world, your imagination” should have the tag- (not really a world and anything u do will be censored and owned by us).
Personally I have no illusions about sl or ll- but to talk about this development in communication in terms of it not being that important to corporations is just silly. I remember having the same debate with an architect company back in the early 90s about the “new” web. After telling me they didn’t need a web page back then, they now do most of their business and communication over the net.
The web as we have known it- the untameable or the uncensorable web, is now being censored and tamed. And the fact is it is a planned takeover… And we are part of it. Because we are allowing it through not confronting isps and accepting corporate/company “ownership” of our conversations/personal details/creativity.
As a socialist (bad word in America, I know!), I believe in changing the system that allows this privatisation of space and laws within legal systems etc. The enclosure of the land in the west in the past led people to factory slavery and an acceptance of “ownership” rather than shared commonality. The corporations and the govt are doing the same again with the ownership of our communication and knowledge. The corporations cannot be changed from within, one by one. The corporation must be changed from without by lobbying your governments- pushing for change- and not allowing corporations dictate what u say. LL is a small part of this. They have a profit margin. Read more here: http://www.slleftunity.com
UncleBill
Apr 25th, 2008
Interesting.. but I don’t see the events in China as a harbinger for future censorship in the US, or any other ‘democracy’.
The rest of the world does not emulate China. For better or worse, the world emulates the US (I’m sure I’ll have to duck a few stones on that one). China is not ‘ahead’, its behind. The good news is, that while it still has a long way to go in understanding basic human rights, the nation’s eventual liberation will be at the hands of its growing middle class.
The issue here is ‘control’ and private enterprise. It seems like an easy enough argument to make against ‘them’ as long as that is the only perspective you take. By denying ‘them’ the right to distribute and own their product, and profit from it, you are denying me that right as well. If ‘they’ are not allowed to create and distribute their own product, nothing I create is truly mine as well. Humans, by their very nature, are competitive animals. Hence the need for benchmarks for success like $$ and property. This is also the reason Socialist experiments in the past have always descended into Communist or Fascist nightmares.
Socialism, and even Anarchism, appeal to our ideas of a utopic peaceful world where all men are equal and everything is everyone’s. Unfortunately, the hard truth is that all men are NOT equal, whether or not they were born so. Some work harder than others, some are smarter, some have talents that are more valuable. Do these differences entitle them to more? Maybe they do, I think so. Should they be compelled to help those without the same level of talent, intelligence etc? Well, morality would seem to indicate they should, but by the same rule we can’t force them to do this.
The difference in our opinions here may be based on the fact that you see Government and corporations as having the same agenda, while I see a world where their agenda’s can be quite different. Staging a protest against privatisation in an application owned and created by a private entity isn’t going to get anyone anywhere. To influence thoughts and ideas, you’ll need to build your own and show why it is better.
l337sp34k; l0s3rsp34k
Apr 25th, 2008
Luckily no-one ‘owns’the internet, and as long as there’s still free countries (as opposed to the US or China) who have a BIG share in the internet, it will remain pretty much free.
If I cannot voice my opinion on AOL or MSN, I’ll do it elsewhere on a non US or non commie server/network.
and as far as I know, SL still has freedom and free speech, it’s only people who no-one wants arond that are booted out (eg, plastic duck, dissability or what is the name again, PN, deadly codec etc etc). Which has little to do with freedom or cencorship, as they’re not really only voicing their opinions but just annoy.
Wanna know LL’s agenda?
MAKE MONEY.
just like every other single company on the face of the planet… DUH.
Also: I see someone above ask out loud if deadly codec is possibly related to these new griefers, then codec denying with force he is, then one of the dissing ant people saying he *is* part of their group… Which is it boys? make up your minds…
or let Prok do it for you LOL
LC
Apr 25th, 2008
I ran into a few dozen sims full of their droppings earlier today, and all i got from bumping into one of them was a script error, “Cannot find object “Bullet” in inventory.”
So i’ll give them a F for scripting.
Archie Lukas
May 3rd, 2008
The yankies have the answer
Invade them
Lock them up in strange countries with no human rights
Get the nasty buggers out of SL
These nasty punters are taking it too far
Lord Kamina
May 3rd, 2008
DETECTING MASSIVE QUANTITIES OF BAWWWWW IN THIS SECTOR.
Also, lol libfag. BAWWWW PRESIDENT BUSH INVADED SANDKIPS AND BOMBED THEM BACK TO THE STONE AGE AND THEN REBUILT THEIR ENTIRE CITY.
ALL GLORY TO THE GREAT AMERICAN EMPIRE
FUCK YEAH.
Yannic Yifu
May 9th, 2008
yeah DiSSENTiON rocks fuck you SL
bad support banning for no reason ripped me 300k plus land off fuck u SL
DiSSENTiON destroy SL ill help ya
Dog
May 10th, 2008
Who cares? its just another loose group of socially inept attention seekers who assume being able to remotely force a computer in a huge group of computers to reset itself makes them demigods or something.. Big deal.
They are just the same as those that go before them. Lame.
Witness X
May 10th, 2008
Oh, d3adly’s in DiSTenTion all right.
In fact, he IS DisPEPsia.
There’s only one guy in the whole group – he’s it. That’s one of the gifts of anonymity – you can make one person look like dozens of people pretty easily. Until somebody unmasked you.
Or you get picked up for something serious, whereupon none of it matters after that. You’re just boned.