“The Justice League Unlimited is right in what they are doing, and I fully support whatever they do. If anyone wishes to disagree with me, good luck finding me In-World. I personally believe Kalel Venkman to be fully within his rights to pursue legal action, and I intend to assist him in any way I can.”

Sure, that’s why you are anonymous – XD

I don’t think anyone would hunt you. Has anyone seen mobs of multicoloured avatars clad in an array of random prims carrying burning torches on their way the Superman’s secret hide out? Of course not. Everyone is chuckling for sure, but I don’t think anyone bothered enough to track pro JLU people down. There are far better things to do (like setting your screen saver to blank screen and wait in baited anticipation for the next instalment, making sure not to bump the mouse)

The Justice League Unlimited is right in what they are doing, and I fully support whatever they do. If anyone wishes to disagree with me, good luck finding me In-World. I personally believe Kalel Venkman to be fully within his rights to pursue legal action, and I intend to assist him in any way I can.

To Neo (and whoever else you’re posing as, Kalel):

I am in the process of publicizing a similar database that keeps tabs of avatars that engage in roleplay with criminal elements. The database is accessible only to roleplay cops, each of whom undergoes a background check before given account credentials. Needless to say, we take several precautions to ensure the integrity of the database is not compromised. While we don’t personally care whether or not the contents are released (because, as you know, if the content was written by a user, it is technically their property, even though this wouldn’t hold up in court, and we have no say in the matter), we must prevent vandalism. The whole concept is designed to help roleplay police departments keep records similar to what would be kept in the real world (mainly incident reports, arrest warrants, licenses of any kind, traffic citations, etc.) and allow them to share it between such departments. Moreso, the database can keep track of non-roleplay (OOC) incidents, which affects the avatar’s “roleplay behavior”.

The problem with this, as you are probably aware, is that people tend to submit evidence such as chat logs and personal information in OOC (behavioral) reports, which, obviously, is against the Terms of Service. While the database operates off-world and thus whether or not it is within the ToS’s jurisdiction is questionable, it is still a slight issue that must be addressed.

Here’s how to get around it: distance yourself, as the database operator, from user submissions. In our case, we post our legal disclaimer several places around the site. We also force users to check a box ensuring that they have read our disclaimer and terms of service before they can perform any action. Furthermore, users are encouraged to report submissions that are in violation of the terms of service (either ours or Second Life’s), which are reviewed and removed regularly. Even more, we require departments that subscribe to the service to inform the estate manager of their jurisdiction to tell them that identifiable information will be logged within the database, and while still within the bounds of the ToS, it is a criminal record and it will be linked to them for as long as the database stands, which means if visitors do something stupid, it will be recorded. Let me reiterate – do not, ever, record any identifiable data without notifying the participants beforehand, and do not, ever, claim ownership. This causes innumerable problems both with your criminal record and your public image.

Of course, being the complete blockhead that we have witnessed you to be, you have done just that. In fact, you have gone so far as to file copyright claims on such content. You are out of your mind, no?

In any case, while this is all after the fact and you probably won’t benefit at all from this helpful information, I hope that you (or anyone else reading this that is tossing around the idea of starting such an operation) can learn something from this.

I sincerely hope that Linden Lab employees did not provide payment info or other information regarding SL residents to this group. If this did occur, then those employees will hopefully be led from LL’s offices in handcuffs, as they have most definitely violated several laws. When you work in any business that processes credit and payment information, the NUMBER ONE RULE is that you never disclose financial information except as required by law to a regulatory agency (ie IRS, SEC) or under a valid court order such as a warrant.

The more I read about this, the more I hope that any LL employees who were involved in this group will resign. Plexus, if you had access to this database, which appears to include RL information and even photographs of SL residents that was quite clearly not provided in their SL profiles or with their consent, then you have failed Linden Lab and all SecondLife residents by not immediately shutting down this irresponsible and dangerous disclosure. I hope that M Linden will find your resignation on his desk on Monday.

As to those misguided vigilantes who believe that the JLU or any other group like it has done anything worthwhile to deter griefing, then I feel very sorry for your wasted efforts.

This story was sent to me by a friend, and he and I have on occasions hunted down and reported several fairly serious security exploits that could be used by griefers. I can guarantee you that there are many people who toil in obscurity hunting down bugs and exploits, trying to reproduce them so that Linden Lab can (and does) fix them. I’m talking about serious griefing tools: client-crashers, sim crashers, DoS attacks (worse, they would have appeared to have come from agni.lindenlab.com), and lord knows how many other bugs that I was never aware of. I only know the stuff that I have reported and that friends have reported. Some stuff is “benign” enough to be placed on the regular JIRA as a ticket to fix a bug, others warranted confidential SEC tickets (and yes, I have filed them and seen them fixed promptly). Those actions have done far more to stop griefing and make SL a better experience than anything that your impotent little organization could possibly have done. And of course, I cannot extend nearly enough credit to Andrew Linden for his excellent work tweaking the physics engine to eliminate many griefing attacks to nothing more than a small push.

But hey, you made sure to keep files on noobs who rezzed freebie cars in a sandbox. Huzzah. I can guarantee you that if you ever try to extend your little wannabe police force in any region in which I have Estate or eject/ban privileges, or where I know the region owner or managers, you will be ejected, teleported home, banned, and subject to an AR just as the griefer will be, because as far as I can tell, there’s little difference. All that I see here are a bunch of people who seem to have the exact same mentality as J. Edgar Hoover but with far less intelligence (in both senses of the word) and far less effective. It reminds me of a case in the 60s where FBI agents were willing to send 4 innocent men to life in prison to preserve the identity of a mob snitch. At some point along the line, law enforcement officials were so deeply invested in their “war” with the mob that “winning” became more important than serving and protecting.

At least be honest about what you’re doing, because it’s not protecting anyone, just fighting some make-believe war against a bunch of dumbass virgin hackers with even fewer computer skills than you. I’m sure that you believe that you are providing a valuable, even necessary service, and when it was just vigilante “anti-griefing,” we were all willing to just laugh at you and go back to actually trying to build and script and create and sell products to customers who likely never heard of you. But when you crossed the line and began collecting AND POSTING ON YOUR DATABASE the real-life information and even pictures of other people without their consent, you became every bit as bad as that fuckwit Tizzers was with his stalking attempt.

I don’t particularly like Pix, or the Herald, or Prok, or Intlibber, or many of the people you have on your database (dunno why you have Immy on there, though, she’s just a smartass, like me). But I’ve decided that the sort of people who would go to these lengths to compile all of this information on so many perceived “enemies” are just a level of psychiatrically “interesting” that’s a level above and beyond even what one expects from SL.

Obviously it’s obvious. But it still must have taken some effort on your part, which is the point that I was making.

Don’t know why they’re bothering, honestly there’s not even all that much interesting there, and all the stuff that was interesting is already on the Herald.

I am not so easily fooled, nor will it be so easily taken offline