In a recent article here in the Herald, Urizenus Sklar argued that the US Attorney in the Barrett Brown case was attempting to smear Barrett by listing a whole number of allegedly bad attributes of Barrett and then publishing them in a public court document.  

I think Uri missed the bigger picture here. Not that Uri is wrong.  But Uri missed the fact that larded into the US Attorney's comments is a tacit indictment of the entire US criminal justice system.  

The US Attorney's screed against Barrett looked like this:

Perhaps without realizing the prejudicial effects on brown the media repeatedly has publicized potentially inadmissible and prejudicial information such as Brown’s … anarchist ideology… troubled childhood and alternative schooling, declaration that he is an atheist, use and abuse of ecstasy, acid, heroin, and marijuana, lack of steady employment, claimed diagnoses of ADHD and depression, associates descriptions of Brown as a junkie, name fag, moral fag, court jester…

Now, the question is this:  Why on God's Green Earth should it be impossible, or even difficult, for someone who is an atheist, or someone who is depressed, or someone who has ADHD or someone who lacks steady employment, or someone who has used drugs to get a fair trial in this country?

You see the deep point here is that implicit in the US Attorney's statement is the admission that for people who are even just a tiny bit outside of the mainstream, the justice system can not be counted on to be fair to them.  Any perceived flaw which sets you outside of a Norman Rockwell ideal is enough to ensure that the justice system, if you find your way into it, will grind you to pieces.  Tiny pieces.

If you are depressed, you cannot count on the justice system to be fair to you.

If you use marijuana, you cannot count on the justice system to be fair to you.

If you had alternative schooling or raised by alternative parenting, you cannot count on the justice system to be fair to you.

If you are a student of, or influenced by, anarchist writings, you cannot count on the justice system to be fair to you.

If you were once a heroine addict, now on Suboxone, you cannot count on the justice system to be fair to you.

If you had a troubled childhood, you cannot count on the justice system to be fair to you.

If you lack steady employment, you cannot count on the justice system to be fair to you.

If you are a moral fag (that is, if you are ethically motivated hacker), you cannot count on the justice system to be fair to you.

In short, if you are remotely alternative and outside of the power structure, you cannot count on the justice system to be fair to you. 

That you US Attorney, for admitting this.  Now, when do we begin to fix the problem?

Several weeks ago, the popular message board Reddit announced that it was making a policy change to ban all "suggestive or sexual content featuring minors.” Owned by Advanced Publications, Reddit has made a name for itself in part by its hands-off, pro-free-speech, let-the-users-decide, and self-police approach. In fact, before the policy change, the only rules of the site were no spamming, no cheating, no personal info, nothing illegal, and no interfering with the site's functionality . Small wonder, then, that this decision brought about a dramatic reaction from the Reddit community, although one could argue that child-porn is illegal, so technically there has been no rule change. Be that as it may, some saw that this decision went against the very nature of Reddit, while others were completely on board with it. One user claimed passionately: "For better or for worse, Reddit has moved from a non-interventionist to a policing organization."

No doubt, Reddit’s hands-off policy towards the content posted on its site is markedly different than that of Facebook which is promoting a sanitized alternative to the darker corners of the Internet within its gated community. As exposed in ad nauseam in a recently leaked document called the Abuse Standard’s Violation, Facebook has banned a lot of content ranging from camel toes to women breastfeeding. Tarleton Gillespie rightfully contends that, through the arbitrary rules delineated in this document, Facebook is able to play the custodian and is ultimately the arbiter of public discourse. The fact that private corporations are able to assume the important role of determining, or helping to determine, what is acceptable as public speech is frightening, for sure. Mostly because, as Gillespie notes, sites like Facebook are relatively obscure about how they manage their custodial duties and they rather not draw attention to the presence of so much obscene content on their sites, so they regularly engage in censorship to expunge it.

This post, with the Reddit case, sets out to explore the other end of the spectrum.

To be sure, this difference lies in the fact that the two sites provide very different types of services and thus have very different user base, but what brings them together is our concern for freedom of speech on the Internet. This is a valid concern, but unfortunately, the concept itself has degenerated into a gimmick, a tagline of some sorts, used by the sincere and the criminal alike, used for different purposes, for sure, but used nonetheless.

In a manner of speaking, Reddit presents a test case for the possibilities of what freedom of speech could bring about. Users are able to open subreddits on the topics of their choice and they are able to vote a particular post up or down which, ultimately, earns the owner of a particular post “karma” points. It is an organized chaos, if you will, a veritable democracy, not unlike the boards of 4chan or Something Awful, and it turns out, it harbors a very dark side of the participatory web.

A cursory glance at the darker Reddits posted on the site, however, clarifies what appeared to be a dramatic change in policy that took effect several weeks ago. For the last couple of years, several scandals brought attention to some of the questionable content housed by the site. As diligently documented by various sites, in particular Gawker, Reddit users kept creating subsections that promote pedophilia and other content such as raping and battering of women, pictures of dead kids, killing black people (replace this euphemism with the "n" word) and/or women, “choking a bitch,” and other equally jaw dropping topics that make you feel like you are staring point blank at the heart of darkness as depicted by Joseph Conrad. The only thing that keeps the general public from accessing this juicy content is a cute little Reddit mascot that asks you if you are 18 and are willing to see adult content.

The pedophilia sections of Reddit were first brought to attention of the mainstream media back in October 2011 following Anderson Cooper’s detailed coverage of the darker side of these message boards. The Jailbait reddit was the home of more than 20,000 users who posted pictures of scantily-clad—but clothed nonetheless—teens—many of which were stolen from people's Facebook profiles.

In response to Cooper's prime time coverage, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian defended Reddit's content claiming that Reddit doesn't host the material, but rather, that the website is merely a repository of links that go to other sites on the Internet, and as such, it functions like Twitter which also has links to such contents. Ohanian argued that, instead of making allegations against the site accusing it of peddling pedophilia, Cooper could have served the public better if he had encouraged parents to explain to their kids that every time they post a picture somewhere, it is public by default and thus will run the risk of being misused by ill-intended folk out there. There is some validity in this argument. We must teach our kids the necessary media literacy required to navigate the cyberspace with all its glory and pitfalls.

Alexis Ohanian claims Reddit is just a repository of links

What is striking about the Reddit case, however, is that it demonstrates that public discourse is rigorously negotiated both within the Reddit platform and beyond it. In this sense, treating these sites as isolated pockets of communities residing in different locations on the Internet would be taking a reductionist approach to the problem. Unlike Facebook’s invisible hand sanitizing its corporately owned public space, Reddit resembles an early Greek democracy where the Gods are mostly indifferent, or worse yet, abusive as it allegedly has been in the case of the r/lgbt reddit. Perhaps elaborating on the incidents that led to the policy change a bit further will clarify this point.

Cooper’s coverage of the Jailbait subreddit was undoubtedly shocking, but what led to the r/Jailbait’s closure was a different incident. A redditer, who went by the moniker TheContortionist, posted an image of his then underage ex-girlfriend technically in the nude. Unsurprisingly, the image was voted up with the clamors of "request-for-more" until the user gave in and posted another one in which the teen was clearly engaging in oral sex. Shocked Reddit users exposed TheContortionist's post by voting it up to the front page of the site until finally, after a good six hours, the admins were forced to take it down. These images weren't just posted on the forums, but were allegedly distributed through private messages. Faced with public outrage, Reddit reluctantly closed down the entire Jailbait section claiming that it was "threatening the structural integrity of the greater Reddit community."

Although Jailbait was banned, Jailbait alternatives quickly sprung up under various other names. It was only a matter of time that another incident, this time in the "preteen_girls" subreddit, were to cause yet another public outcry. r/preteen_girls mostly featured images of 11 year-old girls in bikinis with sexually explicit captions. It was here that one of the users posted a screenshot of a naked underage girl from a banned film which quickly evoked the outrage of yet another message board residents. That message board was Something Awful (SA). The SA Goons (members of the SA forum) launched a campaign to label Reddit as a vibrant pedophile scene, urging users to contact churches, schools, local news, and law enforcement to put an end to this. And they won the battle. Reddit responded with an explicit ban of "suggestive or sexual content featuring minors.”

Does this decision mean that Reddit has transformed from a non-interventionist organization into a policing one as claimed by one of the disappointed redditers? This is an important point to consider.

According to Reddit, the content it houses is self-policed, and as with similar sites, they really can’t regulate the quality of the content, nor should they need to under most circumstances. In essence, this is not very different than how Wikipedia and many other sites that rely on user-generated content operate. Except, the "self-police" part seems to be markedly dysfunctional in Reddit partially because users have little power over the content of the site except to notify a moderator and, predictably, moderators sometimes can be capricious, random, and inconsistent. Thus far, the site has been evaluating child porn content on a case-to-case basis, but the word on the street is that the admins don't take much action when its users report these images or perhaps they are not swift enough when taking action. The jury is still out on that…

Democratic, for sure… But a laissez-faire approach to public discourse could have frightening outcomes in terms of freedom of speech if the “self-police” part does not work efficiently or the policing faction is abusing its powers. Abuse report, after all, is a click away and most sites give the right of way to the person who is reporting the abuse rather than examining the content in question. To be clear, when I am referring to frightening outcomes, I am not referring to the tasteless, offensive content that is being generated by our fellow kindred all over the planet. I mean the possibility that allowing illegal content being posted, or at least not taking swift action against it, could lead to inviting more government intervention in a space that we, the Internet denizens, hold sacred. The Reddit case, in this respect, presents a case study through which we could examine some of these issues.

When making this statement, I have the following in mind.

A month has passed since the Internet won its battle against the highly controversial bills, SOPA and PIPA, which were supported primarily by the media industry in its pursuit to crush the illegal transmission of copyrighted content. Advocating an Internet Blacklist Legislation and eliminating the safe harbor clause of DMCA, these bills threatened the very integrity of the Internet. The protest day was glorious and made unlikely bedfellows of various groups on the Internet. Reddit was one of them, so was Facebook. The day after this momentous victory, FBI raided the offices of the cyberlocker Megaupload and incarcerated its founder Kim Dotcom on racketeering, copyright infringement and money laundering charges. Two weeks after, Reddit child porn scandal erupted. Unrelated? Perhaps superficially, but the outcomes of such cases may lead to the same door. They bear the potential to invite excessive government regulation into a space we netizens hold so dear.

Similar discussions have taken place on virtual worlds whose destiny is closely tied to that of the Internet at large. The well-known law scholar Jack Balkin, for example, argues that design and play in virtual worlds should themselves be considered exercises of the right to speak and, thus, have constitutional significance. Accordingly, he posits that much of what goes on in virtual worlds should be protected against state regulation by the First Amendment rights of freedom of expression and association. But the increasing amount of criminal activities and various communication torts that take place in these spaces, specifically copyright infringements, theft, and fraud, make the First Amendment doctrine less likely to be sufficient in fully protecting freedom in virtual worlds. Injured parties end up resorting to real-world courts to resolve their differences which ultimately ends up inviting government regulation into these spaces. In a similar fashion, Greg Lastowka and Dan Hunter state that virtual crimes will be of increasing concern for the communities engaging in the design and experience of virtual worlds as they resist external attempts at legal regulation (pg. 124).

Clearly, my goal is not to equate camel toes, breastfeeding, nudity, or offensive content with virtual crime because while the former is a valuable part of public discourse and, therefore, should be considered as protected speech either on Facebook or elsewhere, the latter, which in the aforementioned cases amount to copyright infringement, child pornography, money laundering, are indeed crimes. Make no mistake, governments would be swift to take action against them and the lobbyists would be there to coax them in the right direction. In fact, these considerations were (and still are) the driving forces behind SOPA, PIPA or ACTA. On the outset, these bills aim to quash copyright infringement but are threatening our freedom of speech in the process.

It is concerns such as these that dictate some of the hard lines that social media sites draw when regulating users' freedom of speech. That hard line is being negotiated among the netizens, activist groups, scholars, companies, lobbyists, politicians, and what have you. It is also being negotiated on a national and international scale. Reddit’s approach could be just as detrimental for the future of freedom of speech as Facebook’s. After all, how many times can you push against a door until it finally busts open and leads you to a path from which there is no return?

PaleFire (the author) has graciously granted the Alphaville Herald permission to reprint this piece from Pandora's Box

What is it about Second Life that attracts and retains obsessive-compulsive meta-gamerz who can’t keep their play inside the game?

Do large land tier payments to the Lab trump civil discourse even when Lab staff are swept up in an ugly cycle of Twitter/Google bombing payback as we saw with the LabRatuOut mess? After a concerted effort to attract the Lab’s attention to the recent excesses of the Justice League Unlimited, some of my friends in The Pink Hands faction are getting a bit cynical.

the Pink Hands faction is becoming cynical about Linden Lab

The golden rule seems to be in effect - those spending the virtual gold, rule. Perhaps Rod Humble is just hoping he can finish his new not-SL mobile-device-enabled game before the house of cards falls.

Meanwhile, consider notoriously toxic trolls such as Jumpman Lane, Kalel Venkman’s Justice League Unlimited vigilantes, or Prokofy Neva -- and the level of effort required to spend years tracking and data-mining other players or mounting an endless series of intensive blog, Twitter, and Google bombing campaigns designed to humiliate and destroy enemies.

Forgiveness and redemption seem to be alien concepts for some trolls upstanding Second Life residents, which implies a deep psychological need is being addressed. What exactly is going on?

A recent article in The Economist describing how “quite ordinary people will succumb to bad behaviour if the circumstances are right” may hold some answers.

According to the article, Nathanael Fast of the University of Southern California and colleagues at Northwestern and Stanford universities ran a series of experiments to see if social circumstances around power and status have the potential to create “little Hitlers” who annoy and frustrate others for their own gratification - or are certain individuals predisposed to this sort of behaviour simply gravitating into situations where they can behave badly?

The experiments randomly placed participants into one of 4 groups: high power/high status, low power/low status, low power/high status, and high power/low status. Participants were given the option of forcing other participants to perform humiliating actions -- or not.

Those in the low status/high power group chose significantly more demeaning tasks to impose onto other participants, while those in the other 3 groups did not exhibit this behaviour.

Does this mean that the more extreme guardians of Second Life feel they are in a position of low status in real life and are compensating by harassing and humiliating those within their reach? 

If, as the study suggests, the combination of low status and high power is a recipe for trouble, I am beginning to think the celebrated free social media tools which empower those dedicated to cultivating their Internet notoriety may contain the seeds of their own destruction as the "little Hitlers" of the social media use their online power to trash everyone else.

Do you still want to play Web 2.0 after watching Jumpman Lane’s Twitter assault on Stroker Serpentine, LabRatuOut’s assault on Esbee Linden, or after following Prokofy Neva’s carefully crafted Google bombing attacks on all and sundry? How do you feel after learning that Kalel Venkman is still expanding and unsuccessfully attempting to secure his Brainiac wiki data mine?

Is this the sort of game you want to play?

In recent days, the SL profile of Rodvik Linden has been under attack by a well known griefer (according to the leaked JLU wiki) who has been conducting a low tech denial of service attack by filling Rodvik Linden's wall with spam about British Lefties, fellow travellers and explaining how robots all tend towards criminality and so disrupting any valid informed debate.

However, even in these dark hours we can find interesting points to discuss.

notorious griefer - with chicken issues

One of the points raised was about the ability to create a sim where livestock could be raised in peace and where friends could come visit. I'm sure the readers will agree this sounds idyllic. But is such a thing possible?

robots exhibiting criminal tendencies at a sandbox yesterday

Let's take chickens, the actual living variety.

They need feeding, they need protecting from problems such as foxes. It's fairly obvious that if we allow our chickens to roam freely in a field, sooner or later foxes will begin attacking them. It's not that the fox is evil, it's just being a fox. So what can we do about protecting the chickens? Because ultimately if we keep chickens we have to protect them from the foxes and that means creating some kind of enclosure or similar. This is the reality faced by chicken farmers every day, so why would it be different in a virtual reality?

To expect virtual reality to work differently to meat reality is a flawed expectation.

Both realities are, in effect, multi-user shared environments and that means that many aspects are outside of our control, just like those foxes. We might find it frustrating that all other users don't conform to our expectations but that's the peril of working in those shared environments. It's also what keeps them interesting from both etic and emic perspectives.

We might find it frustrating that the system we need to jump into in EVE is being gatecamped by a Loki or we might find it frustrating that someone's air support Harrier is making it impossible for us to move from cover in a game of Modern Warfare 2, but these perils are what force us to adopt new strategies and new ways of negotiating with the world around us.

If we want to create an environment where we have absolute control, the only real option is to sign up for Facebook and start using Farmville, in effect a single player environment. Then you can raise chickens in complete peace, only inviting exactly who you want to see your farm.

In such an application, we're no longer in a shared environment and all we can do is show it to other people, they can't interact with it in any meaningful way. In effect you have created a one-person state where you dictate all politics, morals, religion, ethics and freedoms of expression.

But if you decide to create your chicken farm in a multi-user shared environment then you have to accept that - just like in the meat world - other people have their own politics, morals, religion, ethics and ideas on what freedom entails and their choices may ot always coincide with your own. However, isn't that part of what makes shared environments so interesting?

If we choose - and it is a choice - to spend time in shared environments then we have to accept both the benefits and the perils that come with that choice. We can't try and enforce our own ideologies, although we can try to persuade others that our ideologies are good through informed and educated debate. And we have to accept that there will always be foxes. If we're going to go round shooting the foxes in an attempt to protect our chickens, maybe we should reassess whether we're actually best served by working in a multi-user shared environment or whether we'd be better off working in Farmville.
 

When I approached Peter Ludlow at the Society of Cinema and Media Studies in May 2010, I never would have guessed that my research would cause so much concern among anti-griefing organizations, and by that, I mean specifically Kalel Venkman.  Here’s why I am writing this post now, even though I have been conducting my research on griefers since 2006. Apparently, warning notices were sent out to the "Proactive Security" group about me today:

A Reminder - do not interview with Defne Demar

She claims to have only weak ties to the Alphaville Herald, the griefer apologia tabloid run by Pixeleen Mistral, but the truth is that she's in so deep with them she's almost out the other side.  She's working on a book for Peter Ludlow, whose only aim is to glorify griefers.  Anything you give her will not be used for good.

Best advice is to refuse to talk to her, or mute her if you'd rather not be bothered by this person. You all know me well enough that I never say something like this lightly.

Kal

Let’s back up a bit. When I started my research on Second Life, I was a graduate student writing my dissertation on cross-media storytelling. I thought it would be neat to include the disruptive narratives that griefers in Second Life generate as an example of vernacular creativity. At the time, Voted5 had just got banned and all the usual suspects were hanging out at the #SL IRC. So I hung out at the IRC, but also went to SLCC 2006 to establish some contacts and meet the community at large. All were welcoming and friendly.  I am grateful to have them as my friends. I started hanging around in Baku and try to connect with the W-Hat - with mixed success. No surprise there.

Some acted like horses ass, pretended that they were giving me “false” information, while others (like Masakazu Kojima and Decomposing Monstre) were genuinely interested in giving me information about how they build/create/generate stories in this virtual environment such as Second Life. 

I went back to SLCC in 2007 and 2008 and gave papers on the griefing subculture. Right around the time when I was ending my field work, I was able to establish contact with the PN and talked to their leader, Frizzlefry, who again was (and still is) genuinely interested in answering my questions about their organization and their raids. He introduced me to a bunch of their members in their IRC so I can talk to all of them.

Around that time (June 10, 2008 to be exact), I e-mailed Kalel Venkman to ask for an interview and he told me to e-mail him my questions and he’d be happy to answer them. I sent him my human subjects consent form (as required by the IRB-the human subject’s bureau) and waited for him. He sent me the following e-mail the very next day explaining the goal of his organization and some comments about the PN, but failing to give me an interview. I am posting this very first e-mail with some of my comments:

“You have a considerably long paper trail behind you, and that is something quite difficult to forge.  While I may not have any great trust of you at the moment, I do not have any great DIStrust of you either, and your approach to the subject matter appears quite scholarly. I do have over-arching concerns for the safety of the people with whom I relate on a daily basis, so you'll forgive my caution, I hope.”

So, I thought, great! He acknowledges that I have a valid research agenda and that I am *not* pretending to be someone else that I am not, but he is a bit careful. That is to be expected. The e-mail continued:

“I would be willing to share information so as to assist you in building a more balanced picture of events, but may have to omit details on occasion where safety or security would be compromised in the telling.  If we approach such information in our discussions, I will let you know rather than simply fabricate information.  In return, I hope that you will respect my need to keep some things in reserve.  The PN do not operate in the virtual world alone.”

I thought, perfect, as I do want to take a more balanced approach and I don’t need the security details anyway. I want to hear about how the PN is related to the Internet at large. Of course, he is going to withhold some sensitive information. The e-mail continued to explain his organization and how the griefer collective re-imagines/reinvents the history of Second Life:

“Also, I have been running a fairly successful organization within this virtual environment for over two years now, and have acquired what I believe may be some interesting insights into the social dynamic of the metaverse within which we function.  I believe that the principles involve essentially transcend the specific platform and may be applicable to other MMO environments as well.  You may find some of my observations useful in your dissertation.

One thing I have noticed in particular about griefer groups, and the PN in particular, is that they have a very patchy, distorted perception of their own history - often rewriting the parts they find distasteful or unpleasant to suit their egos, and sometimes confusing the disinformation they disseminate with the actual events.  They are frequently unable to communicate with one another except through the use of common memes, and this has a tendency to obfuscate communication to the point where critical information is either not conveyed, reimagined or forgotten.  In particular, they seem to be able to clearly remember events going back only about four to five months at most, living almost completely in the moment.
- Kalel” 

But he never responded to any of my e-mails after that. Realizing that he wasn’t interested in an interview, I stopped trying to contact him.

I graduated from my program in 2009 and it is around that time that I met Peter Ludlow.

When I approached him at the aforementioned conference, we had the idea to write a book that covered the phenomenon of griefing across the Internet. Peter said that it would be best for me to also “work” for the Herald and post some blogs. That I did. I posted some news reports on hackers in general but mainly focused on the book.

My goal with the book, at least in the Second Life section, was to tell the “untold” history of Second Life before it was too late - before the key players disappeared into thin air - before the history was forgotten. By that, I don’t mean the PG13 history of Second Life, the one sanctioned by Linden Lab. I wanted this to be the community’s story. Here’s a brief description of the book’s scope:

“Griefer Wars will begin by examining the early instances of the disruptive activities that took place in online communities such as LambdaMOO and Sims Online and investigate how Internet message boards (Something Awful Forums and 4chan) helped organize these solitary incidents into various movements that extend beyond these boards. In particular, the book will be discussing the presence of such movements in virtual worlds such as EvE Online and Second Life.”

With this goal in mind, I dusted off my previous interview scripts and re-started my field work. I reached out for old contacts and established new ones. I met a bunch of people from the Woodbury crowd (whom I never met before), met more from V5 and PN. I was able to reach out to some of the previous leaders of these groups (Verbana and ^ban^, for instance) and their officers who used to be in the inner circle of these groups. For the PN, that meant the Ghost Shirt Society (GSS) who really knew the ins and outs of their organizations and the psyops that had been conducted in the past.

It is around that time, I figured, contacting Kalel may be a good idea because in the e-mail that he had sent me in 2008, he told me that “[he] would be willing to share information so as to assist [me] in building a more balanced picture of events…” Despite many people’s warnings, who told me that this was a bad idea, I took the man for his word. After all, I wanted to relate a “balanced account” of the events that had occurred. Little did I know that he was not all together there after the infamous Wiki leak.  Here’s my e-mail dated May 17, 2011:

“Greetings Kalel,
I had contacted you several years ago in the hopes that we could chat about JLU while I was writing my dissertation. Let me remind of you what I was doing at the time: I wrote on transmedia storytelling for my dissertation but looked at the development of spatial stories that emerged as a result of the activities of griefers. I graduated in 2009 but I am in the process of writing a book with Peter Ludlow on the phenomenon of griefers, but we are taking a broader approach to the topic. In other words, not only will we be looking at Second Life, but also other virtual worlds, various message boards, and other social networking sites. I am in the process of writing the Second Life section. I personally would like to take a well-rounded approach to the topic. So far I have spoken with some people from the PN,Woodbury, and I am in the process of scheduling interviews with some of the Linden Lab employees. In the hopes of hearing the JLU side of the story, I decided to send you another e-mail. As I see it, this project is an ethnographic research on Second Life as we are documenting some of the happenings that will be lost forever once the platform dies or evolves into something else. So I deem this project to be very valuable. But I would rather not tell a sided story, hence my e-mail to you. I am not affiliated with anyone or anything other than my research and I think JLU may have been short-changed in the process. Will you help me write your story? Or know of someone else who would be willing to chat with me?
Let me know.”

Response was a series of frantic, threatening e-mails. I am not going to quote them word for word, but rather, give you the gist of the madness that was coming through his e-mails. He told me that any material from the BrainiacWiki is copyrighted and that if I included any of that information in the book he’d be filing a DMCA challenge - and that they will wait until the book is in print and released before doing so. He told me that we may not quote him, anything from the Krypton Radio web site, or any web site he personally owned or edited. 

He also spoke on behalf of other people: That he will also be notifying as many people as he could that Ludlow is doing this (For the record: I am not working for Ludlow; I am working with Ludlow), and that I would be receiving a number of other written notifications not to quote or include the writings of others in this work. Of course, none of these things happened. People were fairly open and understanding and I was respectful of my boundaries.

He also vengefully claimed that not only would he not be imparting any information to me, but that I was forbidden from using any information that he owned in my work. 

Here is when it really got interesting: He was telling me that I may not reprint articles from the Herald that contained his intellectual property.  

He also told me that I was dishonest with him in the first time when I e-mailed him in 2008 because I hadn’t told him that I was working with Ludlow. Then he proceeded to accuse Ludlow of being an IP thief because moved his servers to Canada after Kalel filed the DMCA. None of which, of course, was even remotely true. I didn’t start working with Ludlow before 2009; Ludlow didn’t mastermind the leaking operations, nor did he move his servers to Canada to avoid lawsuits, and he is not a thief of any sorts. I wish he was, really, for my sake, for the sake of the book, for the sake of my career. If we were to tell the story of the Philosophy professor going rogue, engaging in leaking operations, stealing intellectual property, putting babies on stakes, I would get my tenure - like now! But no, unfortunately, we have to deal with the boring story we have.

After the series of e-mails Kalel sent me (which were mostly gibberish and had no value to me whatsoever), I realized that he wasn’t going to assist me in writing a “balanced” story of the events after all. 

Baffled, I responded by telling him never to threaten me or any other researcher this way again and that “I was merely extending my courtesy to [him] to allow me to write a better account of what JLU was and what its mission [was].” He sent another gibberish e-mail talking about copyright/DMCA etc., at which point I was getting tired of his e-mails and openly asked him: 

 “Kalel, I am not sure who you think you are interacting with right now. Clearly you have made a lot of assumptions about me and you don't even know me yet. I am not the alt of anyone, nor am I the spokesperson of anyone. I am not doing anyone else's work either… My question to you is simple: Would you be interested in interviewing with me and give me information about your organization and its role in Second Life? This would be your chance to tell me your side of the story as well. This is important to me because I strongly believe that Second Life is about to die as a platform and someone needs to document its history.”

And I stopped contacting him afterwards. But I thought that there maybe, just maybe, are some rational people among the ranks of JLU. I wasn’t mistaken: Greenlantern was kind enough to talk to me but was too scared to tell me anything BUT the press release.  I kindly thanked him for his time and logged off. 

Just to set the record straight since Kalel has accused me of this in his note to the Proactive Security folks: I don’t harass people over e-mail, IM, or in-world. If the Proactive Security people think that I am logging onto Second Life and repeatedly soliciting interviews from a list of people and harassing them, they are sorely mistaken. And they will wait for a long time for this to happen. I don’t beg for a date, I get asked on a date.

I wasn’t initially going to post this. Kalel getting bend out of shape over me is no-news, really. He should have better things to do with his time, like fighting crime, right? But several days ago, Angel Fluffy responded to a message that I had sent him four months ago. It was apparent to me that he was no longer in Second Life nor was he on Skype. He probably logged onto Skype after many months and saw my message and replied to me in the affirmative, saying that he would talk to me. But then he suddenly backed out. I can only assume that, from the notices that went out to the Proactive Security, that he believed Kalel’s mad fabrications. Fair enough -- again, not an important incident in my life. 

I am almost done with the Second Life chapters. And I must confess, the section does not paint a very flattering picture of the anti-griefing organizations in Second Life. But, let this be noted: this is not because I didn’t try to include their side of the story, but rather, they refused to talk to me on account of their insecurities. 

Let’s be clear: I never misrepresented myself to anyone. I never “falsely” claimed to be a researcher. Peter Ludlow is not an IP thief. He wasn’t even around when the Wrong Hands leaked the Wiki, his paper was merely reporting on the news story. In fact, Brainiac, from what I gather, had been leaked many times by various other groups (not just the Wrong Hands) prior to the last incident. More important, Kalel should thank his stars that Pixeleen isn’t taking him to court for filing frivolous DMCA complaints. But this may, of course, change in the long run. Who knows? Time will tell.

But, I do believe that we have to look what’s really at issue here as we’re building this brave new world in cyberspace.

There is one rather minor conclusion and another, a larger one, that relates to digital culture in general. Both of these should be addressed here: 

The most immediate conclusion is regarding the griefer pathology. I’ve been doing research on griefing since 2006. But never, prior to my interaction with Kalel, did I understands the damaging effects that griefing could have on a person’s psyche. After the series of paranoid e-mails I received from him, it was clear to me that the Wrong Hand didn’t just breach the JLU’s security (which was a joke to begin with), but also, effectively turned the JLU into a paranoid collective. It used to be a group that fought for peace, order, and society, that’s for sure. But now, it cloaked itself in secrecy, painfully trying to hide its scars by flinging false accusations to where they don’t belong. Perhaps it was in this respect that the Wrong Hands was most successful. 

The other issue to be noted here is a larger one that pertains to society as a whole.

The frivolous use of DMCA/intellectual property claims to stifle creativity, but in this case, to avoid accountability, silence freedom of speech, and jam open discussion. The copyright war that is being waged today (not just in the case of Kalel, who lost his battle with the Alphaville Herald) is a war of prohibition. Characterizing the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) as “Orwellian,” Lawrence Lessig (2004), a law professor, openly claims that this law is frequently invoked to control the spread of information. “The DMCA was enacted as a response to copyright owners’ first fear about cyberspace. The fear that copyright effectively was dead” (Free Culture, 157). It is a way to stifle creativity, valid research, and dissenting opinions. And it criminalizes the society. I would argue that the issues that are taking place in Second Life are merely the mirror image of this problem. Make no mistake, popcorn farts or not: this is the Wikileaks generation. The US government couldn’t stop it; I doubt a group wearing spandex will.

At the same time, an ocean and a continent away, a cartoonist is being charged with cyber stalking after making videos mocking the local police department and their unethical ways. Judge Cayce in Kings County, Washington heard arguments on the warrant this week.

Meanwhile, Wang Xiaoning and Shi Tao - two Chinese dissidents - are still prisoners in the People's Republic of China.

Now as I previously wrote on the Herald, Yahoo! China released the identifying details of Wang Xiaoning and Shi Tao to the Beijing security services.  Wang and Shi were not operating under the real names, but as pseudonyms. Then Yahoo! was sued in the United States, brought before the U.S. House of Representatives, and made to beg for forgiveness from Wang and Shi's families.  

This was in 2008.  After the first two stories, I start noticing something.

Facebook doesn't like avatar names. Google Plus doesn't like avatar names. Second Life also looked at linking real names with avatar names.  The Kings County prosecutor, who was selected by the police to prosecute this case, is currently trying to get a warrant served after a motion to quash was filed. But the Crown Prosecutors didn't need to bother, as the youths sentenced just used their real names.  And as an added bonus, China is congratulating the UK on its internet restrictions. 

Suppose - besides providing better accuracy for advertisers - Facebook, Google and the rest are demanding real names to prevent being in Yahoo!'s position in 2008?  If the authorities already know who to come after, there is no need to turn over any information. The person is as exposed as if they were in a city street shouting the same statements, but in the online world their words are recorded forever with an arrow pointing to them.  

This approach reduces the internet service provider's liability.  When the Wang and Shi cases came around, the commentator class said Yahoo! didn't need to turn over the information.  Simply put, if a Chinese security services officer asked an employee located in China for information on dissidents, the employee could turn them away and nothing further would happen to the employee or the company. Because as anybody knows, police officers will simply go away if you tell them no.

Yahoo! was sued when they turned over the identifying information, and had to settle the suit while being called before the U.S. Congress to testify about what happened.  But if Yahoo! had not turned over the identifying information, then beyond a loss of business, Yahoo!'s Chinese employees might have found themselves arrested for anything up to being an accessory to obstructing justice.

Notice that while Yahoo! was sued and called before Congress and told they had failed, the two dissidents are still in jail, three years later. 

By moving from avatar identity and pseudonyms to legal identities, Google and Facebook can step back and let whatever authorities arrest whoever they want because without pseudonyms protecting avatars/players and involving corporate bottom lines. 

What will be truly telling is whether Judge Cayce allows the Kings County cartoonist warrant to go through. Will Google balk at revealing the identifying of the cartoonist McFiddlesticks - and then face liability themselves, or will Google comply and let a person who anonymously aired out the police department's dirty laundry without identifying the department's name be put on trial for a potential felony?

Two years and L$15 million fundraised later for an arts nonprofit based completely in Second Life, Ina Centaur gives up the warcry that galvanized hundreds of thousands to donate.

“The arts vs. tier” was Ina Centaur's call - a call that united the residents of Second Life to support the once-heretical cause of contributing not to a real life fund, but “to create good within Second Life for the world to thrive from.” With her account locked and due for deletion, under the weight of a hefty unpaid bill, it seems that the inevitable has happened – art has lost to tier.

On first blush, this sad tale seems the classic Second Life story – builder creates and falls in love with their SL creations, becomes a slave to tier, and is forced to part with their creation when they become unable to pay tier. Thousands of creators have suffered this same vicious cycle of creation and forced abandoning of what they create on Second Life. As with any game with uneven odds, “the house always wins.” Ergo, tier will always survive the resident and their creations. This is simply the way of Second Life, nothing more.

And yet, if you look at the whole picture, there is truly something remarkable in Ina Centaur's case. Most ventures that become self-sufficient for tier on Second Life are either externally funded or based on microeconomic funds from an evident inworld business. Centaur's sLiterary Initiative, however, was based on the doubly disruptive idea that a nonprofit cause dedicated to improving the arts in Second Life can garner both traction and significant funding completely from inworld means. And, it worked – despite the odds, Centaur achieved the mass support of her idealist's nonprofit arts enterprise in a materialistic Second Life.

The emphasis is on the past tense. At this juncture, it seems clear that Linden Lab will be winning this war on tier vs. the arts. Yet, on further consideration, this may be a false victory for the Lab.

The immediate question the destruction of Ina Centaur's content raises is this: “Should virtual content exist only if it is financially viable enough to support a disproportionate tier?”

The real world analogue might go like this, “If you can't pay your rent, you get kicked out, and if you can't pay the other bills, your stuff gets repo'd.” Complications to this view arise when you consider what you can do in real life, vs what you cannot do in Second Life, when finances reach this level. In real life, you'd try calling up friends and family. When your account is locked in Second Life, you become unable to communicate “as yourself” with those on your contact list. In real life, you don't get put on death row for bankruptcy. In Second Life, you lose all of your creations, and your avatar as well – effectively, a virtual death penalty.

The natural question that one might ask is this: “Is there really no way that Linden Lab can preserve a resident's content?”

Currently, neither Linden Lab nor Second Life provides any support for preserving or exporting a resident's content. Third party tools exist, but are imperfect in their ability to export rezzed builds on an entire sim – even if the builds are created by the owner, script functionality and missing prims are bound to arise, and the process of fixing the bugs becomes arduous.

Content created for Second Life exists in a unique ecosystem based on a hastily-designed prims-based platform. The fact that this labor cannot be exported renders the content as worthless in environments beyond the Second Life and OpenSim systems – indeed, the Lab certainly treats the content as such. The fact that there is no way to preserve the content without paying tier fees mean that everyone is fighting Ina's fight when they cash out those hard-earned Lindens to pay tier. We are all fighting to keep our content alive on Second Life, turning the other face on realizing that we've all become slave to tier. We don't want to lose what we created, but there is no other way to keep it, but to pay tier.

When you look at the number of OpenSim startups, you notice the trend of lack of content. It's an unfortunate matter, that many are hopeful that time would ameliorate. Despite latency issues, Second Life has a wealth of content, but does Linden Lab value any of this content? It seems that a creator's work is expendable to the Lab. Indeed, the platform thrives as a virtual world because people are willing to create for free for Second Life:  

Second Life, as a virtual world, is unique in that it inspires its residents to “crowdsource” over US $1.6 billion per year in “unpaid labor” content creation (metrics released from Joe Miller, Kapp and Driscoll, 2007). Considering that Apple's wide-reaching iOS ecosystem only garners third party developers US $2 billion a year, that's a very, very significant number.

Unlike Apple, however, Linden Lab is unable to pay its content creators. Thus, the Lab's strategy and pull in the realm of virtual worlds, is to take content creation for granted. The Lab has a history of getting all that – and more – for free. Virtual creations, photos and machinima's, if selected for usage by Linden Lab, is considered an honor in Second Life. In the creation of its “themed mainlands,” the Lab has also managed to “inspire” builders to create and relinquish all rights to their virtual content at pennies above minimum wage – again, this is considered a “great honor.” For creators: by design, Second Life is a tantalizing but dangerous sweatshop.

There will always be the outliers that will keep the dreamers in, and the others hoping. But, for every Stiletto Moody or Anshe Chung, there will be hundreds of thousands of failed businesses – or modest businesses, barely achieving the same returns as a struggling mom'n'pop shop in real life. If Second Life were a country, its per capita would rank among the lowest – down there, next to nascent African nations, still wartorn for lack of stability.

The point I argue is that if Linden Lab were to default by deleting Ina Centaur's account and content, it would mean that not only does the Lab not value its resident's creations, but it also has no respect for the time and love they put into it.

For those who don't know the story, Ina Centaur locked herself up in a room for two years to create content for her sLiterary Projects – primarily Primtings and mShakespeare (formerly SL Shakespeare Company). She started from a single prim in an empty sandbox, with no land of her own. She created, and people donated. She put these donated funds into tier. Her creation mantra was simple, “I'd put in my time, but not my money.” What she has achieved through thousands of hours of creating and in-kind labor is phenomenal. On any other platform, it would be enough content to create a standalone game of high caliber.

On Second Life, however, Ina Centaur effectively has to sacrifice herself, just to make a statement that her content is worth something.

There's love, and then there's the inevitable destruction of it in Second Life...
 

New Jessie President Caine Constantine

He's donned typical American apparel; blue shirt, high waist chinos, brown belt. The skin; a rugged "warts and all" look that would set one back several thousand Lindens, coupled with the hazel, sculpted hair he sports, Indeed, Caine Constantine bears the patina of the revolutionary capitalist in his prime. There is something of the huckster, something of the mountebank, and perhaps even something of Narcissis, in his gait. The graces of the statesman, with all casual "hahas" and sycophancy to match.

But it was not always so.

Starting off as no more than an inchoate Communist-troll, Supercool Sautereau, Caine. Constantine led a rag-tag group of like-minded e-socialists and /b/tards to other militaries' sims. With rushing strikes on old bases, which perhaps only now exist in the minds of veterans; John Stark, Jessie, Tatakoto, and many others, Constantine soon established himself as one of the last of the dying age; Slurping cheap vodka in the communist den of Old Jessie, gazing at the gargantuan Portrait of the Vozhd Stalin, Perhaps it was here that the moment of catharsis came to him: The age of the hit-and-run attack, of the free for all, of the lone-wolf, was over. Every military now had treaties, rules, establishments, statutes, alliances. How could a group of Young Turks, wielding a plethora of small arms and scattered by the hand of Greenwich Mean Time hope to compete with the new age of the Military Industrial Complex we now recognise today to be the combat community?

Constantine found (or at least, believed he had found) the solution.

The fundamentals of the idea: A haven for all attackers, military or non-military. A well-regulated sim for the protection of fun and mayhem, the right of the people to kill and maim shall not be infringed. A smattering of IMs, a collection for the sim purchase, an adequate publicity campaign and this haven, this New Jessie, was born.

From 2008 New Jessie went from strength to strength, precisely because of its foundations: Here no military was blockaded, here the weapons infractions and prohibitions, long a source of stagnation elsewhere, were not to be found. Here a spirit of enterprise, of adventurism, of the free market flourished. Yet we find no "invisible hand" in this market of death. Instead, only Mr. Constantine and his iron ring of Administrators and Directors who now run The Republic of New Jessie.

Mr. Constantine now runs an empire that calls all militaries into account; Should he wish, all militaries would have to hand their weapons over to him or risk facing the wrath of New jessie, a hub of advertising and military commerce, a nexus for recruiting, income and reputation-building for any respectable militia. Should their weapons be deemed unacceptable in New Jessie, they are forbidden to use them. Worse, should the military refuse to hand over its technology for testing, it is automatically invalidated. The former Communist reaps the rewards of the venture; Arms companies flock to him, the heads of the greatest militaries obey him, and the average man about grid adores him.

Why then, you might say, is the rubric of this article "Profile in Chicanery?" Surely it was about time someone stood up for the average grunt or became a unifying block in this much-divided community, surely Mr. Constantine is doing a good job. Perhaps. But who gave him this job? There was no application process, no vetting, no decision by the people. Constantine just arrived on the scene and with a little money and some flattery he is now one of the most powerful figures in the Community. However, it is not politically-correct to state that fact.

Indeed, the era of the upstart Roman empire comes to the fore of my mind looking upon Mr. Constantine. When "Pax Romana, pax Augusta" swept through Europe, Augustus denied being the one in power, pointing to the senate as the true masters. In a similar way, Constantine repudiates any titles or honours, having retired several times, but looking past the corrupt, inefficent administrators, one clearly sees it is he who pulls the strings. Take for example Liana Pera, the "other president", along with Mr. Constantine, of New Jessie. An interesting name. The Liana plant being a vine that sends out shoots to glue onto sapling trees and ascend with them towards the light. Liana much in the same way has attained "her" power on the back on Mr. Constantine. The only reason for this is simple: Liana Pera is Caine Constantine. The two president system is a gimmick, an illusion.

But apart from his lack of a mandate, his mysterious origin and nature, and divine ambition. Why is Mr. Constantine a threat to this the military community? The power that he holds is too great, action must be taken to clip the wings of this long-ascendant bird. Open your eyes, dear reader, an ask the old question:

`Quis custodiet ipsos custodes

- Le Creuset

by Kelvin R. Throop, concerned resident

A while back, I tried to teleport to my office in Second Life. However, for some reason, I couldn’t teleport there, and I landed in the sim next door. My office sim hadn’t crashed, and I could see buildings and trees across the sim border. But I couldn’t get to my office. So I sent my landlord an IM.

I told her that I couldn’t teleport or fly to my office and asked if she could file a support ticket with Linden Lab. She agreed, but also said had a lot of tickets filed without response. I really needed to get to my office so filed a ticket too – if two people file a ticket, it might get an answer. After submitting my ticket, the problem was fixed about two hours later.

I was lucky – but what about everyone else?

Too many SL landowners file support tickets but get no response for months. Not just a few tickets, but lots of tickets, like my landlady. This problem is not getting better. LL keeps laying off employees and is not hiring enough support workers to replace those that have been laid off.

What should LL do?

The average Linden Lab employee makes at least $50,000 a year. For what it would cost to hire one employee in the U.S. or U.K., the Lab can hire 5 to 10 employees in India or Botswana. This tells me that if LL were to lay off 20 of its employees in the U.S., it could hire 100 employees in India, or 200 in Botswana. Maybe the workers in India can work as concierge and programmers and those in Botswana could take on the support so there would be plenty of customer support workers.

How much of LL work force should be offshored to India, or elsewhere? I would say just about all concierge employees and at least 60% of the programmers. For each one that is laid off, ten or more can be hired elsewhere.

Second Life residents that own or rent land would have more workers to look into support tickets. Think of the abuse reports that can finally be investigated! But because LL has cut back on it’s work force there are fewer workers to look into each abuse report and griefers can keep on causing trouble in SL.

If Linden Lab can have more workers without the added cost, why not hire workers in other countries? Countries with lower wages, fewer regulations, and longer working hours. If LL were to hire workers under the age of 18 or even children, they could pay these workers still lower wages. Which means the Lab could hire many more workers.

Linden Lab needs to start acting like a business, and not like a bunch of leftist hippies. You don’t do that by keeping your HQ, and most of your employees in California. No, you do that by moving your HQ to Texas, and sending at least half your work force to third world countries. If Linden Lab would outsource more agressively, they could have more workers and save money at the same time.
 

In the midst of so many passionately fought battles
We must not be distracted, nor forget our love.

Today, we commemorate the execution of a saint,
St. Valentine, who was amongst the most virtuous.
Often, it seems, valiant warriors are martyred
Unjustly defending a good cause.

Saints, unlike angels, do not live forever,
However, we are reminded of them for an eternity.
Angels, the most loyal servants of God,
Are not so without quarrel amongst them.

As true love is unworthy without conflict
And nothing worthwhile exists without love.
My love: You are all that the righteous desire
Laying my sword down here to rest for a while…

As I kneel you before you, my divine Lady
I must ask for your forgiveness
For all the times that I was neglectful of our love.

During this special day, I am reminded of you
I could not keep fighting so fiercely without my love.
As life without you would serve no purpose
I vow to cherish you always, and love you forever.

I must lead you safely through this obscure path
Beyond this dark forest where we find ourselves dwelling.
Yet, I feel hopeful as I sense that:
Clear days, green pastures are soon to come.

Your light is brighter than any celestial star
Like the moon, kindly gazing upon the heavens.
With such divine grace you must speak to God,
For he has chosen to answer your prayers.

An angel was chosen and dispatched from the heavens.
In haste, I am here now, and forever shall remain!
My apologies, for I could not be with you sooner,
Wishing you a very happy Valentine’s Day.

My Love – by One Song

[I was a little surprised to learn One Song is a poet, but after discussing matters with one of Second Life's most notorious early players it all started to make sense - pixeleen mistral]

One Song (circa 2004)

pixeleen mistral: this seems out of character for you

One Song: you gotta remember the media only covered 1 facet of One Song

Just the white suit wearing business man who wasn’t affraid to take miscreants down But the romantic side of One Song wasn’t really covered But was well known specially amongst One Song’s females

I don’t know Pixeleen never believe in the media, even alternative media… Most of the things I did in the past was all for a very good reason.. and they were all righteous Although by reading all the One Song stories on the Herald, all these things might not be so obvious – unless you knew the character personally

I don’t know if you ever noticed this… but when One Song left the public SL scene, you got vampires in SL, nekos, static dead like primed babies… Everything went downhill from the One Song era not that vampires and nekos are terrible 

Just the level and type of interaction got seriously depricated I don’t remember if you were around much in the One Song era. But I kept the whole crowd in good order.

I served the purpose of an almost "authoritarian" type of leader… not that I believe in Authoritarian societies… although saying that judging from how everything has gone down hill for the most part. I think One Song was the best thing that could of happened in SL’s early days.