One ex-player hopes for $60,000 USD refund as class action settlement mandates payments to exiles

Over the last several days, players banned from the Second Life virtual world have begun receiving notification of a proposed class action settlement (full text here) which will pay the involuntary exiles for their virtual land and both the USD and L$ spacebux currency in their accounts. The former players also have the option of either accepting a $15 USD payment for their inventory of virtual goods, or selling the  goods on Linden Lab's Marketplace web site.

For those who dabbled in virtual land on a large scale, Linden Lab's $1000 USD sim setup fee will be refunded. With refunds for virtual land holdings set at L$ 2/square meter, and the exchange rate set L$ 252 per USD, payouts for virtual land barons could be significant. Those who formerly owned entire sims are looking at refunds of about $1500 for a sim -- each sim is 65,536 square meters in area.

  Philip Rosedale and Linden Research admit no wrongdoing, but are willing to settle

I contacted former land baron Intlibber Brautigan - who was suddenly banned in 2009 while in possession of ~40 sims. Mr. Brautigan did some back of the envelope calculations and said, "Excellent. So that's 42 sims, times 1000 bucks plus 130k L$. So that's almost 60K US I'll get just for the sims".

Intlibber Brautigan

Brautigan went on to say that the money will be shared with shareholders in his former Second Life ventures:

If I am able to recover money from this settlement, it will be divided among BNT shareholders, BNT Financial shareholders and ACE shareholders, according to their last recorded portfolio holding at the time our assets and accounts were stolen by LL. I thank all our shareholders for their patience in the past few years as this legal process has run its course, and their faith that I have always acted in their best interest to the best of my abilities.

As for his personal share of the refund, and his attitude toward Linden Lab, Brautigan told me,

My share of the settlement money, minus shareholders portion, will be invested in my new virtual world project designed to put SL out of business. Any other persons interested in investing in this goal are encouraged to contact me on Facebook.

Mr. Brautigan's  Ancapistan Capital Exchange group on Facebook is here.

Masakazu Kojima

I was first alerted to the class action settlement Friday afternoon by Masakasu Kojima who said she had around $500 USD in her account after being threatened and then struck by Linden Lab's ban hammer.

Ms. Kojima also told me at least one of the infamous Voted5 group had also been contacted via e-mail about the settlement. Given the freewheeling approach to banning accounts practiced by Linden Lab, we can only speculate on how many others players are yet to be contacted.

There are also questions about how players' virtual goods inventory will be sold. Who sets the price - the owner of the goods, or Linden Lab? Or will there be an auction? Perhaps a special section in the Marketplace for sales of rare and collectable virtual goods from banned players? This might help maximize the potential revenue from the sales, and benefit the Lab by increasing demand for  L$ spacebux.

Ms. Kojima also wondered how the SL digital rights management system would affect inventory sales and asked, "What about notrans (no-transfer) stuff? What about copyable stuff? Do they sell stuff you made full permissions?".

But the biggest question is whether Linden Lab will provide refunds to those banned after the class action enrollment period ends.

As a matter of basic fairness, we can hope the game gods have learned a lesson in fair play.  If not,  should players continue to expect to fight multi-year legal battles to force  the Lab to respect basic property rights?

$15 for all your virtual wares - except for DMCA'ed and copybotted goods

Last week I was on the Herald Yacht, steaming towards the Herald retirement villa in the Turks and Caicos islands, when the emergency phone rang in the ready room. Helmut, my trusty cabin boy summoned me. Barrett Brown was calling.

Mr. Brown, for those of you who don’t know, is currently in federal custody looking at charges that could put him away for 105 years for linking to the cache from a hack of the private intelligence firm Strategic Forecasting. He was also an alumnus of the notorious Second Life griefer group The Patriotic Nigras and a second group called illuminati/i/illuminati. “Uri baby,” he implored, “you have to come out of retirement, the fate of the free world hangs in the balance!”

For those of you who don’t know it, the story of Barrett Brown is an interesting one. After his years as a Second Life griefer, Barrett graduated to being a rather gifted writer, penning many essays for Vanity Fair, The Skeptical Inquirer, True/Slant, The Guardian, and the Huffington Post. True to his roots, he mercilessly trolled conservative pundits like Thomas Friedman, Michelle Malkin, Charles Krauthammer, and Sara Palin biographer Robert Stacy McCain.

In 2010 Brown was working on a book on right wing political pundits, when some of the actions of Anonymous caught his attention and he penned a defense in support of one of their anti-censorship operations in Australia. This brought him to the attention of Gregg Housh (the Anon who bought a Guy Fawkes mask and, with a crack team of fellow Anons, made the first video for Operation Chanology) and Housh subsequently brought Brown into the orbit of Anonymous. Brown eventually became a frequent spokesperson for Anonymous during the Tunisian and Egyptian uprisings. (Brown’s role did not involving computer hacking – he couldn’t hack his way out of a box of tissues.) His interview with Michael Issikoff in those heady days remains legendary. 

In February, 2011, against the background of the Anonymous actions in the Arab Spring, Aaron Barr, the CEO of a private information security company called HBGary boasted that he had identified leadership of Anonymous. This boast provoked an epic hack of HBGary by a hacktivist group called Intenet Feds (subsequently called LulzSec). That hack, which was splashy enough to garner the attention of The Colbert Report, resulted in every form of pwnage known to mankind, including the defacing and destruction of the servers and websites of HBGary. Along the way 70,000 e-mails were downloaded and posted online. One terabyte of data from HBGary’s backup servers were wiped, and as a final insult to injury the contents of its CEO Aaron Barr’s iPad were remotely wiped.

The HBGary hack was motivated by the desire to humiliate HBGary, but it had the side effect of dropping a gold mine into the lap of Mr. Brown. One of the first things discovered was a power point presentation that developed a strategy for undermining the credibility of the journalist Glenn Greenwald and thereby neutralize his defense of WikiLeaks. But there was more. There was a conspiracy of government agencies, lobbying and cybersecurity firms to carry out a disinformation campaign against critics of the Chamber of Commerce. There were also plans for data mining and disinformation campaigns targeting social organizations and advocacy groups.

The plot was already thick, but then it thickened more. By June, the FBI had the goods on the leader of LulzSec, one Hector Xavier Monsegur, who was known to his associates in LulzSec as Sabu. The FBI arrested Sabu on June 7, 2011 and (according to court documents) turned him into an informant the following day. Six months later (Dec. 24, 2011) under the control of the FBI and possibly the FBI’s direction, Sabu appears to have directed some of his LulzSec crew (now called AntiSec) to hack the website of a private security company known as Strategic Forecasting, yielding a trove of approximately five million emails. The FBI may have controlled Sabu and hence the Stratfor hack, but they lost control of the five million emails in the Stratfor database, which quickly made their way onto the Internet and then to WikiLeaks.

When the contents of the Stratfor leak became available, Barrett Brown (who again played no role in the hacking and had no relation to LulzSec or Sabu) determined that his ProjectPM should have a look at it. To direct the project participants to the Stratfor data dump, he pasted a URL into a chat channel. This ultimately would be the principle “crime” for which he is facing 105 years in jail.

It is worth noting that the contents of the Stratfor hack were even more outrageous than those of the HBGary hack. This time the emails ranged from proposals for renditions to surveillance on the Yes Men on behalf of Dow Chemical. One remarkable exchange revealed that the Coca-Cola company was asking Stratfor for intelligence on dealing with PETA, and the Stratfor Vice President for Intelligence remarked in a leaked email that “The FBI has a classified investigation on PETA operatives. I'll see what I can uncover.” Suggesting, of course, that not only did Stratfor have access to the classified material, but that it would be provided to Coca-Cola. The FBI had been turned into a private dick for corporate America.

The FBI, arguably itself responsible for the information being released, needed to get the toothpaste back into the tube, decided that one way to staunch the distribution of the Stratfor data would be to stomp on Brown and his Project PM. A warrant was issued for Brown’s laptop, presumably on the assumption that incriminating information would be found there.

When the FBI went to serve the warrant on Brown he was not home but at his mother’s house, and he sensibly decided to stay there. The FBI returned with a warrant to search his mother’s house, retrieved his laptop, and found exactly nothing incriminating. Deciding they needed a way to turn up the heat on Brown, they initiated charges against his mother for obstruction of justice.

At the time Brown was experiencing the difficult side effects of the medication he was taking to ameliorate the effects of his heroin addiction while also dealing with the harassment of his mother by the FBI, and he snapped, uploading a video to YouTube that vaguely threatened the FBI agent that was harassing his mother.

“I know what’s legal, I know what’s been done to me… And if it’s legal when it’s done to me, it’s going to be legal when it’s done to FBI Agent Robert Smith—who is a criminal.”
“That’s why [FBI special agent] Robert Smith’s life is over. And when I say his life is over, I’m not saying I’m going to kill him, but I am going to ruin his life and look into his fucking kids… How do you like them apples?”

Because threatening an agent would only put Barrett away for a few years, the charges that could lock him up permanently had to be found elsewhere. In this instance, the DoJ took advantage of the fact that the Stratfor data had a number of unencrypted credit card numbers and validation codes. This would be the pretext for charging Brown with Traffic in Stolen Authentication Features, Access Device Fraud, Aggravated Identity Theft. Add to this an Obstruction of Justice charge and the charges relating to the threat against the FBI agent, and Brown is looking century of jail time. He has been denied bail.

When Brown went to jail, work on ProjectPM ground to a halt. Even worse, the DoJ now took an interest in everyone else who had participated in ProjectPM. On April 2, the DOJ served the domain hosting service CloudFlare with a subpoena for all records on the ProjectPM website, and in particular asked for the IP addresses of everyone who had accessed and contributed to ProjectPM, claiming it was a criminal enterprise. The message was clear: Anyone else who looks into this matter does so at their grave peril.

Here we are. Barrett Brown sits in prison and many activists are afraid to go near the Stratfor files; worse, the mainstream media appears to be completely uninterested in their contents.

While the media and much of the world have been understandably outraged by the revelation of the NSA’s spying program, Barrett Brown’s work was pointing towards much deeper problems. First, he showed that this wasn’t merely a problem of private intelligence firms spying on us – it was worse than that. These firms are trying to manufacture a false reality for us. They are engaged in PSYOPS against a civilian population on behalf of their corporate clients.

But even this tells only half the story. One might have thought that private intelligence agencies were simply doing outsourced intelligence work for the US Government. But unfortunately it seems that the tail has begun to wag the dog – it appears that in many respects the US Government and in particular the Department of Justice is now working for private intelligence firms. This is evident when, for example, Stratfor asks for FBI classified files on PETA or the Department of Justice is used to try and punish journalists for probing into these private intelligence companies.

But I disgress. I began with Barrett’s call to the Herald hotline. So what did Barrett want? He put it this way: “Uri baby, in the hall of mirrors that is the Internets, you can only trust the Herald to get the story right. You and Pix have got to come back. The game is bigger now.”

And well, yes, the game is bigger now. Former Herald staffer Prokofy Neva saw this too, in her delightfully positive and chirpy essay on her blog Wired State. 

The entire thing makes me think of The Wrong Hands and the Justice League -- a story in Second Life that prefigured many of our woes in real life today…

… It's like the story of WikiLeaks and the story of the NSA, today. It is one of the many thing I feel were prototyped in Second Life where it was really easy to prototype -- a hostage community of people online that you could easily affect like dropping a rock in a pond, endless capacity for virtual harassment, endless edge-casing and lawfaring capacity with a troop of coders and developers of the same hacker tribe who are the managers of Second Life at Linden Lab.

Actually, I don’t know what that means and neither do you, but what I think Prok is trying to say is that reality is beginning to imitate the virtual reality of 2006, and those of us who honed our skills trying to sort through the spy-vs-spy mindfuck games of Second Life are particularly well equipped to navigate house of mirrors created for us by the NSA, FBI, private intelligence companies etc.

So now that the so-called Real World has begun to imitate Second Life, the Herald is returning to its mission of helping its dedicated readers find their way through the house of mirrors. There is a war on reality happening. The Herald is going to cover it. For Barrett Brown. For our readers. And for the lulz.
 

Monday, Linden Lab suddenly deleted the Sandvich sim, a popular Steam-themed region in Second Life which inspired a chaotic YouTube video tribute. The Lab's action sparked a round of protests as banned players were stripped of their virtual assets - without any sort of due process - and took their complaints to teh Interwebs' court of public opinion with a post at the Reddit.com web site titled "R.I.P. Steam/Reddit Second Life theme park. Linden Lab banned it".

Sandvich sim before the ban hammer fell

The post reached #16 - leveling up to the front page of Reddit - and has received over 750 comments as of this writing. This may be more than just another tempest in a sandbox world. Reddit.com is currently ranked as the 66th most popular web site in the US and 137th worldwide, while Second Life's appeal has become much more selective in recent years - a problem widely attributed to exorbitant virtual land prices, bait and switch business tactics, and a history of questionable game governance.

The situation is so dire that even hardcore fanbois are now running thought experiments on a player buyout of Second Life.

Lab nukes sim - makes front page news at Reddit.com

Hoping to reverse - or perhaps delay - Second Life's decline, Linden Lab recently announced that Second Life will be listed in the popular Steam game portal with the promise of exposing the game to a larger audience. This news inspired a group of Second Life players to re-purpose a Reddit themed region that ex-Linden Lab staffer Hamlet Au has been hyping for months into a Steam-themed sim in hopes that this might grow their community as Steam players began exploring Second Life.

However, in the meta-gaming faction wars of Second Life, growing your community can be seen as an existential threat to other groups - or even the game itself. Oh noes! Could it be that a long standing feud between The Justice League Unlimited and the Soviet Woodbury/Wrong Hands/PN factions led to Linden Lab's removal of Sandvich sim? It seems so.

Kalel Venkman claims responsibility and thanks Michael Linden

According to what appears to be a screen capture of a Proactive Security group notice, JLU gang leader Kalel Venkman is claiming responsibility for identifying a "Woodbury/PN enclave". Mr. Venkman - who appears in Second Life in the form of a Superman avatar - was gracious enough to thank Michael Linden for his part in the Sandvich smackdown. It is good to see that Lab staff seem willing to take sides in the in-world faction wars -- this will certainly inspire more players to spend $295/month renting server space. What could possibly go wrong?

However, despite the confidence that a superman-of-steel avatar with a weakness for frivolous DMCA complaints inspires, I do have a few questions. Did Venkman ever consider what sort of publicity he would garner for Second Life? With friends like Venkman, who needs enemies?

Michael Linden's involvement in the Sandvich destruction also raises questions. Michael was most recently sighted working on the road crew Linden Department of Public Works and not believed to be involved in Second Life governance. Perhaps he made an exception this one time - but why?

More to the point, mixed signals from the game gods were evident as certain Linden Lab staff including Tommy Linden had been sighted at Sandvich sim socializing with the sim owners and builders. It appears that Tommy Linden enjoyed his visit so much that he posted a picture to his my.secondlife.com profile at one point - then suddenly removed it. But the evidence lives on on in the Google cache. Is it any wonder that the Sandvich residents were caught off guard? In the hall of mirrors that is teh interwebs, who can you really trust?

Tommy Linden liked Sandvich sim - then changed his mind

Someone pass me the Pepto Bismol, please! That is all I can think of saying after surviving the social event of the decade in the new, post-Linden, metaverse.

 [photo by Paparazzo Joenz]

Attending this A-list event were Alphaville Herald staffers Urizenus Sklar, Pixeleen Mistral, and PaleFire, former PN boss Windowlic Klaar, Woodbury alums Tizzers, Atlas, and Huns, Woodbury Dean Edward Clift, Hollywood film-makers Brett Baum and Vivien Lesnik (she of the pro-Castro documentary, /busted!). Well it all just makes you think, doesn’t it?

What possible reason could there be for this confluence of ne’re-do-wells, griefers, pointy-headed intellectuals, and Hollywood moguls? I don’t know and I don’t care, because whatever nefarious plots and technocommunist revolutions they were planning, they partied like it was 1917!
 

Atlas and Tizzers not drinking that Moet Crap.

Agent from Chapman University joins the conspiracy.

Tizzers, Huns, and Atlas in the Queen Elizabeth Herald Suite.

But what are they up to? Is it a new transmedia ARG done under the auspices of Henry Jenkins – one of the technocommunists from whom they take their marching orders? Is it a plan to turn us into a nation of brony-loving, rainbow-pooping yiffers? Is it yet another tendril of the monster that has become the Occupy Movement? The Rabelaisian quality of the evening suggested that perhaps they were planning a 21st Century Carnival of the Grotesque. Only one thing is for sure: In the hall of mirrors that is the Interwebs, we may never know.

 

As I prepared to expose a horrific virtual pet abuse scandal in Second Life this afternoon, a pair of SMS messages brought my iPhone to life - and put virtual pets on hold as the prospect of being scammed out of $9.99/month by phone bill ganking scumbags caught my attention.

You didn't ask for MobChance - but we have already billed you by the time you read this

An operation named Mblox/BuneUS had somehow obtained my mobile phone number and enrolled me - without my consent - in MobChance IQ Fun Facts. Am I now part of an increasingly popular large scale scam IQ test on the general population? It appears so.

While the messages said I could end the service with a STOP txt or by calling their phone number, a quick search of the interwebs revealed that as soon as you see the first two messages, Mblox/BuneUS has already charged you without consent - a practice known as cramming. I had sent a STOP message, but when I visited the AT&T site it was clear that STOP didn't have any effect - there was already a $9.99 charge on my phone bill.

According to several accounts at scam tracking sites, the call center for BuneLLC is a complete waste of time. These are not the sort of people I want to negotiate with - it was time for a call to AT&T to get the charges reversed, and block the possibility that anyone else could try this stunt.

Yes, the gameifaction of real life continues with big bucks to be made by 3rd parties placing unauthorized charges on phone bills - particularly because the unwary are billed indefinately.

According to DailyFinance, a US Senate report issued in July places cramming charges at over $2 billion/year - and 17 state Attorneys General are calling on a limp FTC to enact rules to curb the practice for both wireless and landline phones. The FTC seems to want to proceed very cautiously - perhaps the revolving door into industry beckons - or is this more a case of regulatory capture? Meanwhile the wireless carriers are thought to have designs on becoming a sort of phone/3rd-party billing hybrid, and so are concerned about creating friction in the billing process setup. This leaves the door wide open for scams.

If the FTC is reluctant, could controlling this sort of fraud be something that even the lobbyist-money-dependent Congress can agree on? It would certainly be more productive than the ill-advised SOPA and PIPA legislation.

But perhaps limiting the opportunity for large scale fraud is too much to ask. Cramming is big business for both those allegedly running scams such as Jason Hope of JAWA.com and for the phone carriers processing the billings. This may explain why the practice persists - as Hamid Shojaee explains at AZDisruptors.com.

With the phone companies pocketing a portion of the charges billed through their systems, and the landline business on the decline, walking away from any sort of revenue appears to be difficult. Perhaps that is why after calling AT&T to get a credit placed on my account for the unauthorized charges, it took a bit of persuading to get the customer service rep to enable "parental controls" on the account so that third parties cannot place charges without my explicit consent.

In a rational world, requiring explicit permission before billing would be the norm, but for whatever reason, there seems to be a reluctance to limit the ability of grifters to scam via phone bills. Have you looked at the details of your phone bill lately? You might be surprised at the games that are being played.

It took a call to AT&T to get Mblox/BuneUS out of my bill

Stroker Tweets his farewell to Second Life

Monday evening I was able to interview Jumpman Lane and get his perspective on a situation many believe is an extreme case of cyberstalking and online bullying. In the interview, Mr. Lane made a number of extremely troubling statements - continuing his attacks on Stroker Serpentine and claiming Linden Lab staff encouraged his harassment of Serpentine after Serpentine filed a lawsuit against Linden Lab. But is this credible?

Jumpman Lane is well known for pursuing what I can only hope is a very deep level of roleplay in Second Life and taking his game to extremes - and into mainstream Internet media such as Facebook and Twitter. In the online world, where reputation is the only real currency, this cautionary take of what seems to be a smear artist and serial Google bomber with a grudge should give us all pause.

Is this the sort of game you want to play?

Pixeleen Mistral: this is a nice place, how long have you had it?
Jumpman Lane: this is juro kotharis masterpiece lol
Jumpman Lane: the dawson residence
Jumpman Lane: 6 months
Jumpman Lane: lady dawson charges me 100 usd a month lol

Jumpman Lane's office -  replica of Stroker Serpentine's head on the desk and skateboard leaning on the wall

Pixeleen Mistral: youch! I guess you can afford it though
Jumpman Lane: yup
Jumpman Lane: so u brought along any griefers lmao
Jumpman Lane: this dumps near natoma
Jumpman Lane: phils hill all that
Jumpman Lane: u crsh this theyll has ban ya lol
Jumpman Lane: hehehehe one of the allures of this ol laggy place

Pixeleen Mistral: I don't know why I have this reputation for griefers - I just talk to everybody
Jumpman Lane: hehehe whose kiddin whom pix hehehe
Jumpman Lane: ur a card
Jumpman Lane: i dont mind tho this is my show dump

Pixeleen Mistral: so - let's get started - I've been thinking about interviewing you for the Herald for a while
Jumpman Lane: why? hehehehe
Jumpman Lane: shoot

Pixeleen Mistral: before we get going - you know I have an issue with the potty mouth stuff, right?
Jumpman Lane: i wont cuss none pix i swear

Pixeleen Mistral: so do your best to behave
Jumpman Lane: i hate editing out stuff too
Jumpman Lane:

Pixeleen Mistral: you have had a long running disagreement with Stroker Serpentine
Pixeleen Mistral: but from what I saw on twitter recently you won
Pixeleen Mistral: how did that all play out?
Jumpman Lane: yeah i guess but he's crafty. he'll play up sympathy and come back to a bunch of hugs
Jumpman Lane: i unno

Pixeleen Mistral: I get people asking me what even started the fight
Jumpman Lane: i mean i was yappin with some tards online and saw his suicide note

Pixeleen Mistral: maybe we should start from the beginning
Jumpman Lane: oh thats easy. all his flunky pals used to sic me on theeir enemies
Jumpman Lane: cheergirl sicced me on chelsea

Pixeleen Mistral: chelsea?
Jumpman Lane: alfa winger sicced me on the owner of some dump club called platinum
Jumpman Lane: chelsea malibu

Pixeleen Mistral: and what does alfa winger do?
Jumpman Lane: well cheergirl sicced me on corsi mousehold but corsi well corsi sent me gifts and bought my allegience
Jumpman Lane: crap might have to edit that out lol
Jumpman Lane: alfa owns slcamz

Pixeleen Mistral: so that is an SL porn site?
Jumpman Lane: he had a girlfriend with her hears set on naming a club platinum so he paid me to run the platinum club owners off
Jumpman Lane: he makes a mint doing live cams in sl
Jumpman Lane: its a club
Jumpman Lane: slcamz u interviewed emm years ago lol
Jumpman Lane: they have these ukranina chicks doing live cams out of sl

Pixeleen Mistral: so things started out with you being an enforcer to muscle the competition out?
Jumpman Lane: basically i was a gun for hire at first in this stroker thing but then he pissed me off or something and it just built up lol
Jumpman Lane: yes precicly
Jumpman Lane: really just to smear folks

Pixeleen Mistral: how did stroker piss you off?
Jumpman Lane: i forgot lol it was before he built hump boy lame
Jumpman Lane: something he said somewhere
Jumpman Lane: then he sued linden lab and i had all this crap his buddies had told me so i spilled them

Pixeleen Mistral: so you didn't like it when stroker sued Linden Lab
Jumpman Lane: and after really looking into corsi's story i realized what a phoney stroker was and how easy it would be to attack him

Pixeleen Mistral: that upset a lot of people
Jumpman Lane: coudnt have cared less when they sued Linden Lab
Jumpman Lane: in fact if u dig for it u'll see where i supported him
Jumpman Lane: but like i said i was like a gun for hire

a gun for hire

Pixeleen Mistral: I know - that is what I am trying to understand
Jumpman Lane: then the lindens contacted me
Jumpman Lane: with them it was all hints

Pixeleen Mistral: hints like what
Jumpman Lane: heck they fired im so it dont matter now

Pixeleen Mistral: ?
Jumpman Lane: Blondin was the one who approached me about smearing stroker over the suit
Jumpman Lane: he even lets it slip in one of his office hours

Pixeleen Mistral: ok - and you knew a lot of what was going on because you had been working with Stroker before
Jumpman Lane: noooooo
Jumpman Lane: never met stroker lol im sure we've never had an inworld conversation
Jumpman Lane: i met chelsea malibu first
Jumpman Lane: she told me a bunch of HER secrets to impress me
Jumpman Lane: then i met cheergirl who did the same
Jumpman Lane: then alf then hard rust

Pixeleen Mistral: ok - so you had dirt from chelsea and some others
Jumpman Lane: i know a lot of what they do in sl caws they told and showed me
Jumpman Lane: dirt from chelsea dirt from cheergirl dirt from alfa
Jumpman Lane: no dirt from hard he just follwed me around like a puppy

Pixeleen Mistral: LOL
Jumpman Lane: and dirt from a few lindens
Jumpman Lane: things to find out things to mention

Pixeleen Mistral: and the idea was to make Stroker look bad?
Jumpman Lane: that was their idea but i told them the truth is even better because he made himself look bad
Jumpman Lane: take his stance on ip rights

Pixeleen Mistral: ok
Jumpman Lane: he hates copybot but everybody he hangs withnis wearing stolen skins lmao
Jumpman Lane: its the biggest joke
Jumpman Lane: why is cheergirl using ripper viewers lmao
Jumpman Lane: u figure it out

Pixeleen Mistral: so with this sort inside information you had some leverage
Jumpman Lane: WHERE is cheergirl allen even lol
Jumpman Lane: god i got more info than i can write lol
Jumpman Lane: i just wait for the right moment
Jumpman Lane: they just told me things
Jumpman Lane: to impress me i guess
Jumpman Lane: like the redgrave skins

Pixeleen Mistral: maybe they were bragging?
Jumpman Lane: cheergirl gave the things to pals of mine
Jumpman Lane: rezzed the textures i got the asset uuids lmao
Jumpman Lane: pathetic
Jumpman Lane: im sure they were and boy i was im pressed hehehehe i still dont know how to steal skins in sl

Pixeleen Mistral: so you have all this insider info - how did you use it?
Jumpman Lane: well its just stuff they told me like i know the busness model for slcamz
Jumpman Lane: i write stories in my magazine when it suits me
Jumpman Lane: i reveal it to get back at my enemies
Jumpman Lane: consider this and this is accordin to that eros bunch
Jumpman Lane: 1. i wrecked chelsea malibu's deal wiht the real life jenna jameson club jenna and buried mountainmeister llc
Jumpman Lane: 2. wrecked vegas so stroker couldnt sell it like amsterdamn
Jumpman Lane: 3. cawsed him to have to settle eros vs linden research for a promise and n moies and ll's lawyers bills
Jumpman Lane: 4.stroker is suicidal, quit sl, called me the kang lol musta hurt some
Jumpman Lane: and thats what THEY say so i reckon im effective

Jumpsman: "we have attacked our enemies by every means in any venue"

Pixeleen Mistral: so this has been going on for a long time - like the Stroker vs. LL lawsuit is old news
Jumpman Lane: old news to some lmao

Pixeleen Mistral: well - to you and me - but my readers don't know all the backstory
Jumpman Lane: technically u could say im a catspaw in the briggi vs. stroker war because ive defitly joined their cause so even longer

Pixeleen Mistral: but this has been more than some stories in your magazine
Jumpman Lane: hell though in not supposed to sat so im even seting the record straight on some class of 2003 drama that happened long before any of us ever heard of second life
Jumpman Lane: oh this is lush the new edtrix of my magazine
Lusciouslumpchunks McMillan: hello ㋡

Pixeleen Mistral: hi!
Jumpman Lane: more well we have attacked our enemies by every means in any venue lol

Pixeleen Mistral: like?
Jumpman Lane: twitter he prob wanted to committ suicide caws week before last stroker was threatening to caswe me up with a msdemenor charge of cyber stalking
Jumpman Lane: i pointed out to him that his peod antics on that tv show taboo might look bad to the fbi lol
Jumpman Lane: and so would his age play sex toy hump boy lame hehehe

Pixeleen Mistral: oh yeah - I remember the hump boy toy
Jumpman Lane: then he went quiet next i hear he's trying t hang his damn self or something
Jumpman Lane: yup
Jumpman Lane: hump boy waqs a godsend

Pixeleen Mistral: how so?
Jumpman Lane: ll taking it off xtreet helped to
Jumpman Lane: well it was removed for being an age play item
Jumpman Lane: can always say hey he's a pedo
Jumpman Lane: then he goes on taboo and they make him look like a perv
Jumpman Lane: try explaining all that away to some prosecutor never seen second life
Jumpman Lane: to them he's a sex offender and stroker knows it

Pixeleen Mistral: you have also been quite active in the comments on some web sites
Jumpman Lane: sure why not
Jumpman Lane: to the last ill graple wit them saps
Jumpman Lane: from hell's heart ill stab at em
Jumpman Lane: for hates sake spit my last breath at em
Jumpman Lane: they got my pal veronica2vixen devoix banned from second life

Pixeleen Mistral: how did they do that?
Jumpman Lane: former avastar reporter

Pixeleen Mistral: LL never bans people I dislike
Jumpman Lane: i unno cheergirl or her slag bimbo cheerleaders tricked her into repeating a secrect of cheergirls in world lol
Jumpman Lane: theyve banned plenty i dislike hehehe

Pixeleen Mistral: oh - then they ARed her?
Jumpman Lane: like these sappy furries named Poland used to piss me off as a noob
Jumpman Lane: rembeber them lush we bought mysti tools to fight em
Jumpman Lane: the good ol days
Jumpman Lane: yup they ARed her
Jumpman Lane: it was a douzy of a secrect
Lusciouslumpchunks McMillan: lololol..sure do, those were the days for sure
Jumpman Lane: im gonna reveal it in my book douchery thy name is serpentine
Jumpman Lane: hehehehehe

Pixeleen Mistral: but now Stroker is gone as far as I know
Jumpman Lane: Poland got banned

Jumpman: "The thing with Stroker is, he chose to put his rl identity out there, expose his children and whatnot"

Pixeleen Mistral: so what is next?
Jumpman Lane: thats the fall part
Jumpman Lane: it ain t over
Jumpman Lane: cheergirl has to be attended to

Pixeleen Mistral: no?
Jumpman Lane: then chelsea malibu
Jumpman Lane: then alfa winger
Jumpman Lane: then hard rust
Jumpman Lane: i aint never stopping
Jumpman Lane: and theres some class of 2003 saps im gonna bury for lady

Pixeleen Mistral: but isn't Stroker a special case? everyone knows his RL identity
Jumpman Lane: crap for somebody else
Jumpman Lane: then im gonna make me an army of noobs and take over all of second life

Pixeleen Mistral: these others are not known, are they?
Jumpman Lane: naw theres a few enemies my pals have that are as old and famous as stroker
Jumpman Lane: sure we promoted slut mag off his troubles and we're gonna promote pisxel x out of his and others people troubles

Pixeleen Mistral: and even if you don't know their real life names you can still go after their facebook and twitter
Jumpman Lane: pixel x magazine lol we changed the name like yall did
Jumpman Lane: i dont care about their real lives lol
Jumpman Lane: take the olbies like stroker they all disclose who they are anyways
Jumpman Lane: i never attacked stroker rl
Jumpman Lane: he just slipped up rl

Pixeleen Mistral: what do you think Stroker will do next?
Jumpman Lane: he let those taboo producers set him side by side with the biggest wierdos in the world
Jumpman Lane: do some time
Lusciouslumpchunks McMillan: The thing with Stroker is, he chose to put his rl identity out there, expose his children and whatnot
Jumpman Lane: i think he'll lurk back into second life
Jumpman Lane: try to case me up as a cyber stalker
Jumpman Lane: then im marching to the fbi
Lusciouslumpchunks McMillan: i doubt hed leave premanently
Jumpman Lane: exactlyt lush

Pixeleen Mistral: so you think you have evidence that the FBI will accept?
Jumpman Lane: we take that little surrender thing i quit im gona kill myself as looking for pity and virtual hugs
Jumpman Lane: i know the ins and out of the federal legal system
Jumpman Lane: belive it or not ive had a fine education hehehe
Jumpman Lane: federal prosecutors win 90% of their cases
Jumpman Lane: he'd take some kind ogf plea
Jumpman Lane: he's got enough to be charged
Jumpman Lane: and they dont need proof
Jumpman Lane: not beyond a resonable doubt just grand jury evidence for a sealed indictment
Jumpman Lane: or unsealed
Jumpman Lane: then he'd plead to some lesser pedo charge
Jumpman Lane: no more stroker
Jumpman Lane: if i were him i'd stop messing with me all together. quit sl so i can move on down our list of enemies

Pixeleen Mistral: the pedo thing is a very serious charge to make
Jumpman Lane: watch taboo its creepy
Jumpman Lane: in a way i do worry about his daughter
Jumpman Lane: i mean i dont cyber with my close friends in sl
Jumpman Lane: never with lush here for example
Jumpman Lane: i could t with people i refered to as family

Pixeleen Mistral: shouldn't the police have acted on that Taboo show already?
Jumpman Lane: and i cyber all the time
Jumpman Lane: how u know they didnt lmao
Jumpman Lane:
Jumpman Lane: how do you know they arent
Lusciouslumpchunks McMillan: :þ~~~~
Lusciouslumpchunks McMillan: ew, Jump :þ~~~~

Pixeleen Mistral: well - I don't know actually
Jumpman Lane: something sure spooked the man
Lusciouslumpchunks McMillan: be like banging my brother
Jumpman Lane: i know tight
Jumpman Lane: right

Pixeleen Mistral: how can anyone know?
Jumpman Lane: u cant until they unseal the indictment
Jumpman Lane: they do that usually after the plea
Jumpman Lane: the guilty plea

Jumpman: "facebook sucks i just mostly link spam facebook"

Pixeleen Mistral: I remember when you were fighting with Stroker before you said some things about his wife being on crack or something - that seemed to really set Stroker off
Jumpman Lane: put it to ya like this the world will known if his surrender is fake
Jumpman Lane: yeah
Jumpman Lane: they let slip she was in recovery or someth

Pixeleen Mistral: really?
Jumpman Lane: yup stroker said something along those lines in a forum
Jumpman Lane: and recently i called his son gay on twitter lol
Jumpman Lane: well it aint disclosure o nothing i dont think his son is gay
Jumpman Lane: and he disclosed the biut about his wife when he sent me a notecard demanding i retract the statments

Pixeleen Mistral: so it seems like part of how this works is you point out things like this about Stroker and his family and use twitter and facebook
Jumpman Lane: well u told me i couldnt cuss
Jumpman Lane: naw not facebook so muck

Pixeleen Mistral: mostly twitter?
Jumpman Lane: facebook sucks i just mostly link spam facebook lol
Jumpman Lane: well mostly slut magazine hehehe well pixel x magazine but twitter is fun
Jumpman Lane: see i learnt their limits when i tried to get some fake accounts they made of me there
Jumpman Lane: so i know how far to go in twitter

Pixeleen Mistral: it took you a long time to break Stroker though - like years
Jumpman Lane: same in sl i befriended lindens
Jumpman Lane: they let me know the boundaries
Jumpman Lane: vs. eros those boundaries widened a bit lol
Jumpman Lane: naw just since eros vs. linden research
Jumpman Lane: aint been that long lol

Pixeleen Mistral: so after the Eros lawsuit LL gave you more room to maneuver?
Jumpman Lane: hehehehehe plenty more room
Jumpman Lane: take the posts i did in the forums

Pixeleen Mistral: so what is next for you
Jumpman Lane: sl forums
Jumpman Lane: i used to get a three day suspension for calling some one a sap lol

Pixeleen Mistral: and now?
Jumpman Lane: now id get suspended for calling some one a sap too lol
Jumpman Lane: but then
Jumpman Lane: then he had their hands tied
Jumpman Lane: they couldnt discipline him or thyd seem vindictive
Jumpman Lane: they couldnt discipline me caws it wouldnt be fair

Pixeleen Mistral: so you could say pretty much anything
Jumpman Lane: so they called it all a personal dispute and all bets were off
Jumpman Lane: could and did
Jumpman Lane: he could make hump boy i could make effigies and we could defame each other
Jumpman Lane: i got a lil note
Jumpman Lane: play times over jumpy lol
Jumpman Lane: but in all fairness he got a pass too
Jumpman Lane: but he made himself look bad
Jumpman Lane: and the redgrave skin thing didnt help
Jumpman Lane: jewels ur standing on my stuffed head of stroker serpentine heheheh

Pixeleen Mistral: hi jewels!
Jewels Cassell: xD
Jumpman Lane: this is jewels a photog of pixel x and stuiff
Jewels Cassell: sorry, lushys limo driver kicked me onto an odd place!
Jewels Cassell: Hello everyone
Lusciouslumpchunks McMillan: :þ~~~~
Lusciouslumpchunks McMillan: I wanted you to ride Stroker's stuffed face :þ~~~~

Pixeleen Mistral: so how do you think this makes you look?
Jumpman Lane: hi his is pix edits the alphaville herald
Jewels Cassell: I figured lol
Jumpman Lane: look what lmao
Jumpman Lane: ive been like this since day one
Jumpman Lane: im pals with my pals and will bury my enemies and their enemies too
Jumpman Lane: everyone else better just stay out of my way
Jumpman Lane: see im rakin muck here
Jumpman Lane: like citizen lane
Jumpman Lane: some will love me soome will hate me i dont care either way
Jumpman Lane: but if ur my pal weell go all or nothing against the world

Pixeleen Mistral: I think you said recently that you are the Kang of SL
Jumpman Lane: stroker said i was too

Pixeleen Mistral: maybe that is the title I should use
Jumpman Lane: its like the criminal rating u recieve in grand theft auto san andreas
Jumpman Lane: look at my sl
Jumpman Lane: darling of linden lab

Pixeleen Mistral: Jumpman Lane - the Kang of SL
Jumpman Lane: juro kothari custom home lol
Jumpman Lane: yup i sppelt em all out on my blog lol

Pixeleen Mistral: ok - well thanks for talking
Jumpman Lane: from noob through fic to lil carducci man of power aqlla way up to king of second life lol
Jumpman Lane: np

Pixeleen Mistral: I'm getting paged in real life
Jumpman Lane: have a good one lol
Lusciouslumpchunks McMillan: nice to have met you
Lusciouslumpchunks McMillan: ㋡

Pixeleen Mistral: thanks again jumpman - its been real

For almost a week, a particularly ugly chapter in Second Life’s social history has been playing out on both theListSL.blogspot.com and the SLUniverse.com forums. While it is impossible to know if all the claims being made are true, the sheer body of evidence suggests that the Justice League Unlimited's secret wiki's security has been compromised again. Apparently the security-challenged JLU didn't learn anything after their last embarrassment and have continued to compile dossiers on Second Life players without their knowledge or consent. 

JLU advises members to keep quiet about wiki leaks

What seems to be a never-ending series of extremely embarrassing disclosures from the notoriously leaky JLU Brainiac wiki paints a disturbing picture of Kalel Venkman’s band of virtual vigilantes fighting tooth and nail for what they believe is law and order in an online cartoon world - never mind the fact that the other players didn't sign up for a surveillance society game. 

What sort of revelations have the rank and file players up in arms?

Facebook stalking the family of an AIDS patient to verify he is on his deathbed - then speculating that his demise might result in less game world griefing. Tracking real life identities of various Second Life players - sometimes in very great detail. Collecting medical information on those the JLU believes are enemies. Attempting to frame other plays with "black ops". Fabricating chatlogs to file abuse reports hoping to ban other players - it just goes on and on. 

On the other side of the fence, in what has grown to be a 188+ page forum thread with over 4600 replies and 103,000 views, mainstream Second Life fight a war of words with a succession of JLU spokesmen. Strangely, JLU leader Kalel Venkman has yet to step up in public to answer his critics, and those JLU members who have spoken up seem unable to do much more than inflame the situation further. Who are the real griefers are in this situation?

I was hoping against hope that one of the more inflamatory comments was a troll - and asked Green Lantern Excelsior in-world if he was really behind the SLUniverse comments. He said he was, and shared his opinion of the SLUniverse readers.

Pixeleen Mistral: did you really post this:
http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/general-sl-discussion/63339-jlu-harvesting-ip-addresses-125.html#post1357637
Pixeleen Mistral: seriously GLE - did you really post that?
GreenLantern Excelsior: (Saved Wed Aug 24 02:38:21 2011) Yes, I posted that. I posted on many of the pages in that discussion thread.
GreenLantern Excelsior: (Saved Wed Aug 24 02:38:41 2011) I was banned from SL Universe tonight, for posting "links to RL information," i.e., a link to Deadly Codec's obituary. The ban will be lifted on September 6, but I won't return. There are very few members on that board who will engage in serious and respectful discussion. Mostly it is like standing in front of a monkey cage and being pelted with waste products.

The more optimistic members of the anti-JLU faction cling to hope that the Linden game gods will take a stand, hoping against hope that Linden Lab is not in such dire straights that Second Life has been forced to depend on corrupt volunteer vigilantes to help maintain order on the grid. 

Second Life Premium gives you more privacy ad next to players begging Rodvik for help

And so heartfelt pleas are posted to Rodvik Linden’s Second Life profile, but as of this writing remain unanswered. I hope Rodvik hasn’t been playing Farmville in Facebook and neglecting his SL profile page - but Rodvik did mention at the SLCC that social media is taking people’s time away from immersive games. Unfortunately, some of those still deeply engaged in Second Life are taking the game far outside of the virtual realm in ways that seem likely to harm the ailing Second Life brand.

Meanwhile it seems likely that anti-JLU sentiment will continue to rise unless the JLU can somehow cover up the evidence. Will Kalel resort to firing scattershot DMCA takedown notices again? Perhaps not - since this would be a tacit admission that the leaked material is legitimate - and could lead to some unfortunate legal action for the would-be super hero if a pattern of filing frivolous DMCA complaints was demonstrated.

more pleas to Rodvik

and still more

and more

Roo sim - the home base for in-world access to vital Meeroo food supplies - is now encircled with a quarantine corridor in hopes of blocking scammers from using an exploit to create objects in unauthorized areas. Will this novel parcel configuration become a "best practice" for those concerned with controlling object creation on their virtual land? More important - will Linden Lab discount land tier fees to compensate landowners for loss of full use of their virtual land?

Starved Meeroos wander off into the wild - but pay again and they might return

Saturday, I stopped by Roo sim, and discovered the landowners have divided the sim into two parcels. The central parcel is publically accessible, but a 10 meter wide strip encircles the entire outside edge of the sim. Access to this strip of land is limited to the Roo sim administrators - a virtual cordon sanitaire.

ban lines around the edge of the island

This unique land configuration has a certain logic - while it sacrifices 15% of the land area, it also keeps scam artists away from the edges of the sim where they can create objects at will and overlay legitimate food vendors with their own devices.

It is not surprising that some players are sacrificing a part of their land. Consider the glacial progress of the Lab in patching the well-know rez-on-no-rez land exploit and how the Lab hid behind a "privacy policy" after the Meeroos nearly starved.

Now consider that the Lab reportedly had revenues of over $75M for each of the last three years, and is bragging on taking in $7M/month currently. You would think fixing these sorts of exploits would be a high priority. Think again.

Perhaps the Lab should discount the land tier fees by 15% for island owners as a show of good faith and compensation for loss of use. The Lindens should be able to afford it after one of their best quarters ever and record revenues - unless the god's game is now focused on cost cutting and milking the platform for cash.

no entry for sim edge case exploits

A predictable scandal erupted over the last few days as Meeroos began abandoning their owners to wander the grid in search of food. Meeroos are a popular form of virtual pet that require continual petting and feeding with scripted food purchased with L$ spacebux. This may seem something like playing Farmville - an innocent pastime for those raising pretend crops or pets. But for the creators of the Meeroos this is a money spinning business which has attracted interest from scam artists attempting to cash in on the Meeroo craze.

a Meeroo asks - why won't you feed me?

Problems began when day-old accounts with names that appear similar to the legitimate Meeroo creators' account began placing faux food vendors over the top of the legitimate food vending machines in-world. Purchases made from the fake-food machines then credited the scammer's accounts - among them Meer00s Resident and Meero0s Resident. The Meeroo creator's account is named "Meeroos Resident".

This sort of scam should not be possible, since Second Life landowners can control who can create objects on their land. But as reported months ago here in the Herald, there is a long standing exploit that allows players to rez un-authorized objects on restricted land - the sort of thing one might expect a game company to fix quickly - unless the game company was named Linden Lab. Yet it is almost certain that the rez-on-no-rez-land exploit is being used in the Meeroos scam. At the Wonderful World Of Meeroos site, Catherine describes scammers hiding in the corner of the sim creating fake vendors on no-rez land.

Protip for Rodvik: un-patched exploits are killing your game.

To compound the problem, Linden Lab then banned the wrong player - Meeroos Resident - the master account for the food vendors. This effectively shut down the only legitimate food supply in-world. No wonder the Meeroos look worried.

While the naive might like to think this is an isolated incident, it has become clear that the Lab is more than happy to  ban accounts wildly in hopes of catching the bad guys - so what if a few innocents are harmed by the Lab's rough justice? With no transparency about who has been banned or why, there is little accountability inside the Lab and a corporate culture that cultivates gross incompetence.

At this point any normal company would have apologized in public for what can only be described as a first class clusterfuck. But Linden Lab is not a normal company.

Instead of explaining what went wrong and how the fundamental issues would be addressed, the Lindens resorted to their infamous privacy policy. In practice, the privacy policy exists to cover up for anything that might embarrass the Lab. Is anyone really surprised that Second Life has wallowed in a sea of unaccountable incompetence for years?

Linden Lab privacy policy: we don't talk about our mistakes

My enormus fan klub at the Herald will know that I gits me a heap o’ mail thru them-there Internet-tubes.

I done writ about this befo’ but I reckon it are too good to omit when it happens again. In fact, I done got this-hear same letter a year ago from a different dyin’ gal.

I gits me one o’ these-here “please-help-me-cause-I-are-falling-to-pieces-from-cancer-and-my-husband/son/dawg/boyfriend/chikkin-left-me-a-bazillion-bucks-in-Kenya-but-I cain’t-git-it-so-give-me-your-bank-account-please” letters.

Whew. I been a-tryin’ to help these po’ sufferin’ folks for years but they ain’t bit, yet.

Here am the latest attempt to help.

Dear Miz David,



You done writ to me about the horrible-terrible situation what done befell yo’ famberly.



Now I are just a poor, lonesum, woebegone feller who done landed in The Big House (what am called "prison" in the United States) but I done beat that-there rap and am a free man.



I gots me a bank account so’s I reckon I kin help you out sum.



You done said:



our only son died in a ghastly motor accident last year 2010.
I have been battling with both lung cancer and stroke.



Oh my gawd that am awful-terrible. I done lost folks thataway, as well as in explodin’ stills, manglin’ by junkyard dawgs, shootin’ dead by my sister Jezz, alien protology experiments, and Bigfoot-rape.



My late husband deposited the sum of (2.800.000.00 Dollas) Two Million Eight Hundred Thousand Dollas with a Bank here in Cote d’Ivoire and my name as beneficiary of the funds. 



Do tell.



After his death I decided not to remarry or get a child outside my matrimonial home.



That am rite smart. I don’t believe in marryin’ at all, if’n I kin help it, or gettin’ no chirren inside o’ no home. The woods am better or behind the smoke-house for knockin’ up sum gal.



According to the doctor, my medical report shows a have very short life sperm due to my health status presently. 



Ain’t you a gal? Why in Gawd’s name am you a-talkin’ about sperm? Maybe the cancer done mutated you into sum’fin shemale, but that am beside the point. We needs to talk about that-there 2.8 million.



Maybe I may still have another 1-3 months to live, that I do not know but God can say. That is just my faith as a deteriorating cancer patient. 



That are a-startin’ to sound like a country song and I are all ears.



Knowing my health condition I decided to donate the above mentioned funds to an individual Muslim/Christian or any faith



Hoo whee. I are part o’ the First Church o’ the Bleedin’ Heart of Snake-Handlin’ Jesus H. Christ on a Crutch, so I reckons that will do. If’n you wants me to turn Muslim, howsoever, I will do it. Where do I sign up?



The Bible/Qur’an made us to understand that blessed is the hand that giveth.



That am rite original. My Pappy, Pappy-Pappy Enoch, done telled me "boy, that-there hand what taketh are mo’ blessed still."  I done lived by that-there wisdom ever since.



I took this decision because our only son who is suppose to inherit this money and properties is also late



Well, he’ll show up then and don’t worry yo’ poor cancer-eaten heart none. Heck, I are always late.



Ma’am, I plans to watch over that there 2.8 million tighter’n a tick on a cow’s belly till that son o’ yours gits home.



You just git me your bank account number with them 2.8 million in there and I will do the rest. If’n you needs some killin’ done, or just kneecap breakin’ done, my sister Jezz am first-rate muscle for them jobs.



We will be to Coat Divorce or wherever the hell you lives in no time flat, if’n we kin git there by pickup truck.



Yours in God,

Pappy Enoch, Recently Reformed Sinner