Emerald Gang Implodes – Viewer Ban Hammer Next?
by Pixeleen Mistral on 01/09/10 at 9:45 pm
Jessica Lyon has resigned from the Emerald viewer team and published the formerly secret requirements Linden Lab made of the group – which include the expulsion of Skills Hak, Discrete Dreamscape, and Lonely Bluebird (a.k.a. Phox) from the development team – previously Fractured Crystal resigned from the group.
Emerald meeting M Linden, Marty Linden, Joe Linden, and others in happier days (click image for closeup view)
The Emerald gang has been plagued by accusations they were responsible for a DDoS attack on a critic’s web site, revelations of leaking user-identifiable information, high profile resignations, and what is believed to be a case of using unauthorized access to the Vivox admin console to silence another player’s voice – then taunt him in-world. This led Linden Lab to issue a warning against the rogue viewer and remove it from the third party viewer list.
Understandably, Linden Lab seems intent on removing developers with questionable track records from the team, and threatened to block access of the Emerald viewer to Second Life. But in a desperate bid to keep Emerald alive, Arabella Steadham – who does not lie – and Lonely Bluebird felt it best that Lonely Bluebird remain on the team – and so have locked everyone else’s access to the modularsystems servers, according to Jessica’s resignation announcement:
As of some time this morning, all access to the servers have been severed to all but Arabella Steadham and Lonely Bluebird. Neither me, nor any of the other Emerald Developers have the ability to put out releases at this time.
Some speculate that the return of Fractured Crystal to the Emerald gang is now likely – according to an update on Jessica’s blog Fractured Crystal has applied for a trademark on the Emerald Viewer.
But this may all be in vain, if Jessica’s account of the Linden Lab requirements is accurate (full text at the end of this story). Will a skeleton development crew led by Arabella Steadham be able to comply with the Lab’s demand for a sanitized Emerald viewer by Friday?
Apparently Jessica’s ejection from the gang was the culmination of a heated discussion – portions of which were provided by Ms. Lyons, and say in part:
[1:02:01 PM] Jessica Trinity: users aside, everyone here is here because we want to see emerald succeed
[1:02:09 PM] Jessica Trinity: and we’re still here because we believe it can
[1:02:34 PM] Jessica Trinity: leaving for the sake of the project would be the only honorable thing to do hon
[1:02:55 PM] Phox: I guess I’m not honorable then.
[1:03:04 PM] Jessica Trinity: so your willing to be the reason emerald dies?
[1:03:25 PM] Phox: No, Linden Lab will be the reason Emerald dies, regardless of what I do.
[1:03:35 PM] Phox: If my staying results in that outcome, well you can say I told you so.
…
[1:07:14 PM] Jessica Trinity: If i was told to leave, and i had to leave to keep this project going i wouldn’t think twice about it. I would be sad, but i would also be proud that i made the sacrifice to keep it alive
[1:07:48 PM] Phox: Well when I’m told to do something I don’t immediately bend over and let linden lab fuck me.
[1:08:00 PM] Jessica Trinity: phox, they are going to kill the project
[1:08:04 PM] Jessica Trinity: are you living in denial?
[1:08:05 PM] Phox: Let them
Meanwhile an Emerald gang project meeting has appeared on YouTube – apparently Phox will include the capability for the viewer to spoof it’s identity in the very near future.
With an unrepentant Phox standing shoulder to shoulder with Arabella Steadham effectively daring the Lab to ban the Emerald viewer, the clock ticks toward a friday deadline for compliance – or an Emerald viewer ban. All of this suggest now might be a good time for even hardcore Emerald fans to consider their options.
Emerald Project Team:
We have removed the Emerald viewer from our Third-Party Viewer Directory because of its multiple violations of our Policy on Third-Party Viewers.
Our Policy prohibits the intentional targeting of third-party sites as was done recently by the Emerald viewer’s login page. Specifically, the Policy prohibits the distribution of harmful functionality like denial of service attacks or griefing attacks. (TPVP section 2.d.iii)
Our Policy also requires a published privacy policy that specifically describes what user data the third-party viewer collects, stores, or uses, and how it uses, displays, or shares that data. (TPVP section 4.b.i).
The published privacy policy for the Emerald viewer does not disclose what user information the viewer collects. When it came to our attention that the Emerald viewer was collecting the installation path without stripping any user account names present in the path, and storing it in textures produced by the viewer’s graphics library wrapper, we asked that this code be altered to omit full directory paths. After assurances from Emerald developers (Lonely Bluebird) that the code would be altered, we were disappointed to learn that instead of stopping the practice of adding data to textures, the Emerald viewer code encrypted the data in order to obfuscate the data collection practices.
In addition to violating our Policy on Third-Party Viewers, these actions are significant breaches of the trust of the Second Life community. Please remedy these breaches immediately by taking the steps outlined below. Taking these steps is critical to providing transparency around Emerald’s viewer functionality and collection of user data, and to ensuring that the viewer complies with Linden Lab policies and the law. The steps alone do not, however, guarantee that the Emerald viewer will be readmitted to the Third-Party Viewer Directory.
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Provide transparency in your development efforts to both the Second Life community and Linden Lab, including:
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Use open mailing lists or forums for your developer communications.
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Provide a publicly viewable source code repository.
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Provide public code commit notices.
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Demand accountability from each and every Emerald developer, including:
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Require each committer to provide real-world identity information to Linden Lab as a signatory to the certification of compliance with the Third Party Viewer Policy.
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End the participation of any developer who has deliberately violated Linden Lab policy or the law.
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The Emerald viewer’s closed source emkdu library is not in compliance with the GPL. Bring all current and future versions of the Emerald viewer into compliance with the GPL by omitting emkdu. Use OpenJPEG or other GPL-compatible code.
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Update your posted Privacy Policy for the Emerald viewer to specifically describe what user data has been collected or stored by any version of the Emerald viewer that may be used to log into Second Life. For all user data collected or stored, specifically describe in the policy how that user data has been used, displayed, or shared. If you wish to disable login of any versions of the Emerald viewer that may be collecting user data, please advise us immediately of the specific viewer versions.
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Do not distribute any functionality that conceals information in Second Life assets, including through encryption or steganographic techniques, with the sole exception of information that LSL scripts produce or consume. We will be updating the Third-Party Viewer Policy shortly to clarify this requirement. Be sure to bring all current and future versions of the Emerald viewer into compliance with the requirement.
Please respond to this notice no later than this Friday, August 27 and confirm the date by which you will have completed the above steps. Failure to comply with the steps may result in further action by Linden Lab, beyond removal from the Third-Party Viewer Directory. We look forward to your prompt response.
Sincerely,
Oz Linden
And our second response from LL was.
Your responses are acceptable, with the following exceptions and clarifications:
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We have considered your request to retain Phox, Skills, and Discrete on the team in some advisory capacity, and have made a final decision: No association with the project in any capacity is acceptable. All connections between those individuals and Emerald Viewer project must be terminated, and that fact made public by the team.
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The time frame for a release that does not include the emkdu.dll is not acceptable. A release must be made available that will not use an emkdu.dll or an llkdu.dll even if they are on the users system must be made available.
Each of the above issues must be addressed no later than Friday September 3rd or Linden Lab will begin taking steps that will culminate in blocking all access by the Emerald Viewer.
With respect to the identification of contributors: the use of age or payment verification will not be sufficient. We will provide more details on the new requirements as part of updates to the Third Party Viewer Directory policies; these will apply to all new applications, not just yours. Specifics are still being worked on, and I’ll share them publicly as soon as possible, but the essence of the change is that each person with commit access to the viewer code or any project web assets served through the viewer will need to individually execute a certification of compliance with the Third Party Viewer Policy, including real identification and addressing information. Those identities will be confidential.
With respect to the public code repository – the googlecode repository is acceptable, but a link to it should be added to the set of links in your project web site footer, not only on the FAQ page.
Friend of all
Sep 2nd, 2010
Hazim is my Hero
@ ajax straff whats up.
DarkStorm
Sep 2nd, 2010
Seriously Woodbury got just what it deserved after a solid years long harassment of a major landowner in SL. Not to mention circulating copybotted items, generally being a home base for griefer groups and who had in it’s group membership those such as the PN group (won’t sully my keyboard with typing out the whole name) and others who thought it funny to go out and grief/crash sims. Yeah Woodburites were soooooooooo innocent……NOT. The one big sad part about this Emerald downslide apart from the fact that a great viewer was tainted and ultimately destroyed by the very people responsible for how great it was is that now scumbags like Hazim and other Woodiefreaks will gloat.
Kiddoh
Sep 2nd, 2010
@DarkStorm: That’s a cool Prokofy impression, but you’re missing the pages and pages of communist conspiracies and Leninaid! ;P
Gaara Sandalwood
Sep 2nd, 2010
*Reads DarkStorm’s post*
……….*Falls out of my chair laughing*
Darien Caldwell
Sep 2nd, 2010
what unrepentant assholes.
Friend of all
Sep 2nd, 2010
@DarkStorm
Yes Copybotted items are floating around. So what, I use Inertia myself. If you have a problem with me, talk to my hand.
Emerald died because of the dev’s stupidity. Look at onyx, people are using it by spoofing the channel. Who cares?
DDOS attack wasn’t woodbury’s fault. It was emeralds. And since you ran emerald. You are liable to get sued by hazim for the attack.
Friend to Anybody
Sep 2nd, 2010
Oh, “Friend to All” must be Intlibber. Only one person waves an eLawyer penis around like that and makes preposterous statements like “Beware, Haxxorz will sue you.”
Meh
Sep 2nd, 2010
“I’m a copybotter, and friend to all.”
Wait, what?
“Black hat hacker boy can sue you for damages.”
Who does that sound like?
IntHitler. Who has yet to produce any evidence that he’s ever sued anybody, despite years of drunken rhetoric.
doc
Sep 2nd, 2010
@DarkStorm
yes it was a funny time
Friend of all
Sep 2nd, 2010
Do you like waffles?
General Drama
Sep 2nd, 2010
Lessee, the haters are now convinced that Intlibber is Judge Joker AND Friend of All…..
Billy
Sep 3rd, 2010
@friend of all
only if your covering em in golden syrup…..and a free mug of coffee ..
…with a cookie
Meh
Sep 3rd, 2010
Oh, please, like it’s not obvious who they are.
Oh, and how fun – you spend years of your lives in hateful trolling of SL, then when you finally get what’s coming to you, you call the rest of the world “haters”.
doc
Sep 3rd, 2010
@meh
sorry, i didnt understand… do you mean the WU people, or the people with no sense of humor?
Meh
Sep 3rd, 2010
Sorry, the cheers of the entire grid over the deletion of Woodbury were ringing in my ears. What did you say again?
doc
Sep 3rd, 2010
you read with your ears? eeeww
but, ok, i understand now:
“…the cheers of the entire grid over the deletion of Woodbury…”
wait, who were the hateful people again?
Judge Joker
Sep 3rd, 2010
I’m flatted that you would continually think I’m Intlibber, but Intlibber is not a furrie, as far as I’m aware and all my posts are now tagged with my URL anyway, so all it takes is a click to find out where to troll.
Judge Joker > Bunjie > http://furrie.tel
And for anyone who specifically hates me, I have a space reserved for you http://enemys.furrie.tel
I would like to take this opportunity to remind people.
I’m not responsible for the content or logic of anyone else’s opinion based on something I have said.
My thoughts and actions are strictly my own, they do not speak for or represent any “®” company or employer past or present, that I may have worked for or had a general affiliation with.
Kiddoh
Sep 3rd, 2010
“Sorry, the cheers of the entire grid over the deletion of Woodbury were ringing in my ears. What did you say again?”
lol, it’s good to know you require text to speech. The rest of us actually read the text in front of us.
Ted
Sep 3rd, 2010
“high profile resignations”
Completely laughable.
“Understandably, Linden Lab seems intent on removing developers with questionable track records from the team, and threatened to block access of the Emerald viewer to Second Life.”
What is understood is that the author is an idiot. That Linden has no reason, nor means, nor any right to interfere with any other company, nor any other open source project.
What is clear is that Linden Lab doesn’t understand that they have no right whatsoever to dictate time frames, or fixes, or anything else in terms of what a third party viewer project is or does.
Linden Lab looks like an idiot. A complete retard. This is not how this works. The only thing Linden Lab has a say over is whether or not the client may connect to the grid. THAT IS IT.
Now concerning the children of Emerald Dev, they should have had an understanding of what open computing, what open source means, and refused Linden Lab and their demands. They should have continued with a project that allowed real developers to assist and produced proper policies as requires with any organization and continued to produce code.
The only thing this shows us is this. Linden Lab are complete idiots and the Emerald developers and complete children that need to grow up.
Ted
Ted
Sep 3rd, 2010
The above and should have been “are”.
doc
Sep 3rd, 2010
“The only thing Linden Lab has a say over is whether or not the client may connect to the grid. THAT IS IT.”
thats baslicly what they said, do what we want, or we ban your viewer.
“Linden Lab looks like an idiot. A complete retard. ”
thats true, they did exacly the same that the emerlad team did.
They knew about those issues since months, but tried to keep it under the rug, till they had no other chance to deny it.
Believer
Sep 3rd, 2010
Don’t sign your posts, Ted.
<— See, right there.
Jayd3n
Sep 4th, 2010
Has Emerald Logins be blocked yet? I know they cannot restrict the new hacker version of Emerald which allows client spoofing though.
Tracey Humphreys
Sep 4th, 2010
@ Jayd3n
Tracey hasn’t got Emerald on her system so downloads the latest version, to check if logins are blocked.
What’s that say on the log in screen?
“Congratulations!
You have been awarded a LIFE TIME Premier membership of the ModularSystems Botnet!”
/me “How cool is that! Nope, doesn’t seem to be blocked”
K.T.D.
Sep 4th, 2010
http://jessicalyons.wordpress.com/2010/09/03/from-the-ashes/
IntLibber Brautigan
Sep 4th, 2010
Thanks, Judge, for the clarification. I am not and have never been a furry, though I thought I’d befriended almost all of the rational, intelligent, non-drama-queen furry’s in SL (that took about five minutes). If I missed a few, my apologies.
I have only used one other moniker besides “IntLibber” on the Herald, and none of the idiots have identified that persona as of yet, which is further testament to their lack of intelligence.
Jayd3n
Sep 4th, 2010
Well Intlibber, and Stroker are actually pretty nice, and they have the right to file lawsuit against Linden Lab. Intlibber invested thousands of bucks into Second Life back when Linden Lab claimed people fully owned the land before their new TOS ever came into effect.
Stroker sued becuase of all the beds I have seen going around which were copybotted using LSL exploits in the copybot clients to steal/download animations as .anim/.bvh exporters, which even I can do but its illegal, and almost any client can.
The only thing I dont like about Stroker Serpentine, Trish, the owner of Shopping Cart Disco, or Rh Engle’s group is the fact that when Thieves Motherload came they covered a bunch of it up from the public. fact is, there was tons of stolen content, which later on after being denied access to see the ripped content which they were illegally displaying out to LL and other people. I got my hands on a ton of the stolen content, Got a lot of the items Black Listed, but the UUID of the Skins and stuff were the same as the creators, I checked the texture uploaders, and everything. However there was a couple of people I am sure copybotted the stuff, as they re uploaded textures who were easy to track down, however there isn’t anything that can, or could be done because of the time these people let the stolen items get by, simply deleted them, and reported it to LL which only took actions against the root prim, but not for all the other dozens of products going around SL today, and if you ask me that really pissed me off. Something I will never forget.
Other than this, I believe that Both these people have the right to sue Linden Lab, and in fact if I had the money they did, and Lived in a big city, I would file such a big lawsuit over privacy violations that Linden Lab has allowed beyond their agreement I accepted, and even some of my own content which was stolen using security flaws, and they did not make the public aware of such, plus they wont patch the holes there and they are well aware of such, and today they still have no way to fully ban Emerald, or Skills Hak for their privacy violations, nor will they take real action.
Tracey Humphreys
Sep 4th, 2010
Lindens are meeting next Wednesday sept 8th, 5pm – 6pm, to ‘Update Third Party Viewer Blacklist’
see http://status.secondlifegrid.net/
(click ‘More details’)
Little Lost Linden
Sep 4th, 2010
“Lindens are meeting next Wednesday sept 8th, 5pm – 6pm, to ‘Update Third Party Viewer Blacklist’
see http://status.secondlifegrid.net/
(click ‘More details’)”
I went to that location but couldn’t find a more details button. Any chance that isn’t the correct link? If not, I could have missed it somehow.
Tracey Humphreys
Sep 4th, 2010
@ little lost linden
on the right hand side, underneath ‘Public Service Releases’
Tracey Humphreys
Sep 4th, 2010
click ‘TPV blacklist’, then ‘more details’ to see who is attending.
Tux
Sep 4th, 2010
idc, em blocked me ages ago from their viewer. Still, I chuckle at watching those freaks squirm.
I guess the children will get pissed at the lab and a new griffer group will form. Oh for the fun of the old days!
Darien Caldwell
Sep 4th, 2010
“click ‘TPV blacklist’, then ‘more details’ to see who is attending.”
oh is the fact lil accepted the invitation, but soft didn’t, some kind of political statement?
Sneaky but clever.
Dave Bell
Sep 4th, 2010
I don’t actually see anything that looks like details of a meeting. It looks the same as the pre-announcements of server upgrades.
Well, now we know when it’s going to happen. And there might be blog posts, maybe even another email.
had enough
Sep 4th, 2010
“oh is the fact lil accepted the invitation, but soft didn’t, some kind of political statement?”
I think he is afraid to show his face after being caught encouraging the emerald fur fags to pull the shit they pulled. Funny how Soft turned on the fur fags once the cat was let out of the bag.
Tracey Humphreys
Sep 4th, 2010
re TPV blacklist on SL’Status Reports’ page…
It’s gone now, perhaps we weren’t meant to see it?
Strange…
Tracey Humphreys
Sep 4th, 2010
The Google Calendar url for the’ Update Third Party Viewer Blacklist’ is still in my browser history.
That now says ‘This event has been canceled and removed from your calendar’
Didn’t think the Lindens worked at the weekends… Seem to be busy this weekend.
We
Sep 4th, 2010
@Had enough
“I think he is afraid to show his face after being caught encouraging the emerald fur fags to pull the shit they pulled. Funny how Soft turned on the fur fags once the cat was let out of the bag.”
You know the best way to get a hacker to spill incriminating evidence? Be nice to them. Hackers are ego-driven people, and they want to brag about what they did to anyone who will listen that they think they can trust. Hackers bragging is pretty much how all of them get caught. It’s far more likely that Soft was playing “good cop” to get information, than it was he was supporting him. He even stated that the emkdu was fine only if it showed the “End of the path” which would look like “../Emerald/Emerald.exe”, nothing privacy violating there.
Phox and Arabella most likely released that information about Soft because they wanted to drag Soft down with them, I don’t think you’d want to fall for Phox’s trick.
Tracey Humphreys
Sep 4th, 2010
Innula Zenovka posted a screenshot of the’ Update Third Party Viewer Blacklist’ over at http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/general-sl-discussion/48565-emerald-end-36.html#post1013217 if you missed it
W
Sep 7th, 2010
SL sent out a notice today saying Emerald will be locked out tomorrow.
Ronin Squall
Sep 7th, 2010
Looks like 2600′s new feature has just been confirmed.
Here’s the message being circulated in one of the groups I’m in, “For those of you who wish to continue using the Emerald viewer when it becomes blocked (latest version on http://www.emeraldviewer.net ) you should go into advanced -> debug settings and set “EmeraldChannel” to your name.”
Nelson Jenkins
Sep 7th, 2010
I’m about 75% sure at this point that the Lindens are working on a new channel ID system that would block out random channel names or spoofs of other clients.
Nobody Really
Sep 7th, 2010
@ Nelson
I would just about bet they either have something we don’t know about, or are working on something. They did make it a point to let people know that they are aware of the ways to get in with Emerald after the ban, and that they could/would ban accounts for doing it.
James Larken Smith
Sep 8th, 2010
“Do you have any last words Emerald as we strap you to the gurney”? “Yes warden Linden, screw you all and your alt viewer friends”…Doc Linden pronounces Emerald dead at 12:05am”…….
General Drama
Sep 8th, 2010
And even from the grave, Woodbury claims its latest victim, like Davey Jones, dragging Emerald to the depths of the abyss.
Anonymous is legion, it does not forgive, it does not forget.
Ted
Sep 8th, 2010
Nelson wrote:
“I’m about 75% sure at this point that the Lindens are working on a new channel ID system that would block out random channel names or spoofs of other clients.”
There are only a few areas that Linden could really do anything. Spoofing clients, mac addresses, IP etc.. are easy. And the client itself would have to do a bit of back door code to produce anything that would resemble what you are talking about in terms of the client/server relationship.
Just as any client/browser etc.. certain information is given to the server as to what is being used, and every bit of that information can be altered/spoofed.
Linden open sourced the client. It was the right thing to do. The issue is that they have utterly pissed off those that work on the clients, within SL, and well… frankly name one area Linden hasn’t become a dictator over? None. Thus, they won’t do anything at all to stop anyone from connecting with any client they wish.
You can connect with any of the ripper clients, you can connect with any of the other open clients at this point and nothing has been done to keep it from being so. If any changes are made on the server end to keep a client from connecting, within a week that client will be connecting. They know this. To date there is no client that cannot connect. It would be silly for Linden to believe they could control the packets through manipulation that won’t be easily overcame.
Nelson Jenkins
Sep 8th, 2010
@ Ted
I was actually talking about more of a closed-off grid. It’s their grid, so they can do whatever they like with it. Using an excepted closed-source keyfile of sorts on a registration basis would make things a lot more locked-down than the anything-goes policy currently in place.
Judge Joker
Sep 8th, 2010
So whys this site lagging behind in the articles race?
Events are almost over and done with before this site finally gets round to having an opinion, I’m sensing it needs more full time writers.
@Nelson Jenkins
You should, your articles on the other site were more than good enough, dude do it join alphavilleherald if they will let you I don’t think anyone here would mind and would welcome more in-depth, factual and timely articles.
Nelson Jenkins
Sep 8th, 2010
@ Judge Joker
I wish they would post some more, or at least post a link to my blog or something if they’re lazy. Hell, I’m about to debunk Arabella’s breaking-news article on her ban. AH probably won’t cover it for a while.
And as for joining the team, I’ve considered it, but can’t, for the life of me, figure out how.
TOBSDA
Sep 8th, 2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZyiZM3Qitg