Justice by the Book

As many of you know, the official answer has been handed down by from Robin Linden regarding the “Impeach Bush” and other political signs that now dot the countryside. That answer was:



In many ways the decision is a triumph of the strictly-by-the-book-no-matter-what philosophy of community management. Unfortunately, “by-the-book” only works if the “book” is well written to begin with. If comprehensive volumes of laws and by-laws existed for Second Life that covered all potential violations and combinations of violations then I feel the Lindens would be duty-bound to govern by the numbers leave their informed interpretations and opinions at the door.

However our TOS/CS is a small, vague document. Rather than cover specifics, the TOS leaves ample room for Linden interpretation. This is fine as long as the Lindens are ready and willing to interpret! Sadly I fear the Lindens may be borrowing the worst from both possible policies. The Lindens fail to address specific issues in the TOS, and then refuse to stop bad behavior on the grounds that the behavior wasn’t specifically mentioned in the TOS!

The result is what a past poster referred to as “Marginal Griefing.” Marginal Griefing can be compared to having your little brother wave his pointed finger close to (BUT NOT TOUCHING) your face. He is technically not breaking the rules laid out by mom but is still successfully bringing grief to his sibling. Fortunately in a family setting a parent can see the behavior for what it is, and put a stop to it. Not so in Second Life.

I don’t have a passionate opinion on the “Impeach Bush” signs (which is why these comments appear on their own thread.) But I DO think there should be a discussion about how much interpretation the Lindens should be allowed when keeping the peace as it compares to the level of protection provided by our TOS. We should either have a comprehensive TOS with little Linden interpretation, or a flexible TOS with a great deal of Linden interpretation. But a vague TOS combined with Lindens who are unable to act without a TOS section specifically backing them up will simply open the door for harassment, griefing, or worse.

Well, Lazarus Divine is not in the find list anymore.

It's quite possible that LL has decided that they're going to take him down with something else which is easier and more straightforward to enforce.

Did I just write all that for nothing?

*goes back to bed*

I think my point was wholey relevant to what you posted.

The nature of doing justice by the book might be more subtle than you are making it out to be.

Just as rule benders can use the TOS to their advantage, rule enforces can get strict as necessary and take you out for reasons you weren't even aware of.

Let's just say if you expect consistant and timely enforcement from a company with 50 employees and a track record of everything but either, there's an error in your logic that requires a system reboot.

It is becoming more and more clear to me that LL is neither professional, consistant, nor capable of being so until/unless they make a serious effort toward that end.

I doubt they will do so, because they're too busy chasing the wrong market and ignoring the concerns of the one that is keeping their bills paid. This is also something that has been demonstrated as a habit with them, highly unlikely to change.

Suffice to say I no longer expect LL to act like a business. They're more like a geeky friend who wants to be the next Bill Gates but isn't willing to put forth the effort to actually move out of their garage.

Would he have ruined all his genius evil scheming by leaving himself open to some other violation? Will Lazarus be back in 4 days to wreak havoc in another form?

I think we're all jumping the gun on the impeach bush issue.

Until we find out whether or not LD has been permanently banned, we have to wonder whether there might be something more subtle here.

I think this goes back to Ginko, as well. Anyone with half a business brain would not let that kind of ponzi scheme run rampant, but they didn't squash them.

Why? I can only assume something more subtle was going on in the background and they chose not to make us aware of it.

The alternative, of course, is that LL is led by a bunch of morons. I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt.

I think the issue is the longstanding one of control and responsibility. Linden Lab maintains control of the grid but seems not to want responsibility for it. LL acts sometimes like an absentee landlord. They're the only ones with the authority to deal with many problems, but they also have this "prime directive" approach. Private islands are moving things in the right direction. We just need the freedom to choose our landlord.

Books of justice can always get abused.

I've got a book here with examples of some cases that went to court in the UK in the past - the ones that established precedents that are constantly in use today. Look at these:

- Guy bought something on his credit card knowing he didn't have enough credit, but argued he had committed no crime because once the card was accepted it became the card company's responsibility to pay the merchant, not his.

- Another guy got a taxi somewhere and told the driver he wasn't going to pay. The driver drove to the police station and the guy got arrested. The guy again said he had committed no crime, because you can only commit the crime of "leaving without paying" if it's reached the point where you're supposed to pay. For a taxi journey, that would be the point at which you arrived at your destination - but since the driver took him to the police station, he never had arrived at the destination and thus there was nothing to pay.

- Another taxi driver took extra money from someone's purse that she held out for him to to take the money from, and arged he hadn't stolen anything because by holding it out she had willingly offered the entire contents of her purse to him.

If this kind of thing happens with the real life law, similar things are going to happen with the LL TOS, and there's going to need to be a better way of dealing with this. If it wasn't for the system of trial by a human and precedent, all the above cases would have gotten away with it.

I would agree with all that. Though I DO think the control/responsibility issue goes beyond land issues like this one. Griefing and harassment, for example.

I find this amusing for several reasons... the whole purported 'snow crash' inspiration is complete counter to this 'own your own island, shut yourself away to have aesthetics' mindset that is bandied about as "the solution".

I find it amusing also that LL is so consistantly fucking CLUELESS about how to keep their core content and investing.

Finally, I find it amusing that it will be at least another year before the existing core market will be willing to do more than complain about it.

For my part, I trashed plans to tier up, stopped making clothing, and have greatly reigned in my once growing marketing business (high selectivity). as I said previously, LL is like a geeky friend who wants to be the next Bill Gates, but isn't willing to move out of their garage.

They've no concept of the very real link between zoning and building trust, or of how lack of zoning actively impedes interest in tiering up, or how repeated inconsistancy and a lack of committment to community standards as more than lipservice is hurting them.

And on top of all that, they don't listen.

Deadly combination, really. Just a matter of time.

Well, you do have llejectfrom land

You don't have llMakeUglySignsGoAway

Though, I guess you can knock yourself down to 64 metres. Kinda screwed if you're next to one, though.

I don't buy this. If this is true, someone needs to be fired.

/me yawns, taps fingers on desktop waiting for...

A) the next report of a new "Impeach Bush" sign appearing to hit the forums

or

B) LDs land to become Governer Linden or Anshe owned

...before passing further comment.

Seriously, since that land with those "Impeach Bush" signs is all for sale it is one very clear case of land extorsion. I am very surprised that those signs are still around.

This whole "Impeach Bush" controversy and the accompanying loud dissatisfaction with the Linden response makes me wonder why so many people dismiss the idea of a player-run government out-of-hand.

There was a controvery a while back about your own For Sale signs being called ugly and a tool of extortion. Who decides aesthetics in a place where you're allowed to create almost anything (and people usually do)?




I absolutely agree with this statement. I have a strong suspicion that LL has been keeping close tabs on this guy, waiting for him to cross the line on a clear TOS enforcement. Kinda like that asshole neighbor that leaves rusted cars and broken glass in his yard, but he's finally arrested for fencing VCRs or beating his wife. The cops know he's trouble, but you have to wait for him to actually do something wrong before you arrest him.

I have to leave for the weekend and don't have time to compose another post on this topic, so I will just link my post in the other thread about this decision:

/108/0d/76300/2.html#post791610

I think this is exactly why. Differing views. Many people don't want the people we see here having any say as to how this virtual world is run.

And again, it can be done within the confines of SL, so why do we need to have it applied so broadly over the whole of the land?

The question aimee is really do you want a TOS that is a hundred and twenty volumes with lawyers to argue it, judges to interpret it, and courts to enforce it? If you are LL do you really want to pay for this, and if you are players, do you really want to pay enough for SL to subsidize this cost and make LL a profit?

Actually, the only real question is -- when will LL get it together?

The name he chose is interesting and possibly significant.

Lazarus rose from the dead.

To me that says he is either a former griefer returned to do more damage (because LL wont refuse paypal accounts), or that he intends to come back after he is banned for this exploit.

LL just needs to add a feature to block all content based on user name. This would block objects, sounds, etc. Then people can just 'ignore' trashy builds or tactics to devalue land. You could tell a potential buyer of your land: "Yeah those cubes are ugly but just right click them and chose Filter Owners Content". The filtering would happen on the client end so theres not much or any overhead to the LL servers. This is assuming that whenever an object is 'presented' to our clients for 'rezzing' (or playing) that it includes the owners key. I would not want to add additional traffic.

Every agreement I ever signed (including the TOS), and every job description i have ever had has a "cover-all" line in it which says somethign like "and anythign else we think of."

The TOS specifically, has a clause like this in it in regards to protecting LL from liability for destroyed content. It says that they are just not responsible if that happens and that they can actually even take everything you own from you any time they want with no explanation necessary.

Al that is necessary in the case of Mr. Impeach Bush, is a single similar clause that protects the wider community from idiots like this. It's already in there in a sense when they say that stuff about "tolerance." That clause, slightly re-worded, would allow them to just pick people (even at random) and say "your being intolerant" and chuck them out.

They can *easily* do this, they just dont want the bad PR of doing this, or perhaps they don't think that protecting the wider community is as worth-while as protecting their own asses.

Or perhaps, just perhaps, they are worried they would then have to throw themselves out and the rest of us with them for being intolerant of LD.