Governor Linden slanders my business

First, this is not an issue about free speech.

Free speech is what you do on your OWN land, and in your own private businesses and newspapers. Free speech isn't one citizen, all special and everything, getting to plaster his own personal messages all over the White House and Congress walls, and at every federal park and immigration center.

Here we have a situation where a resident - just like you - gets to sit for free on Linden land, in Welcome Areas, on Infohubs, and tell everybody else who and what sucks. This is a no-brainer, folks.

What's to not understand here?

It is Linden land, people.

That confers Linden sanction.

SL has public lands that exist for the purpose of one hand-picked organization to libel others - and anyone actually thinks that is fair from any point of view?

This is an outrage, and I'm with Anshe on this all the way AND beyond.

Infonet has no business being on Linden Land in the first place, when others cannot. And Infonet certainly has no business sitting there telling people which businesses/builds not to go to, based on somebody's personal opinion.

This is like the President of the U.S. going on national television with a program listing the businesses that suck.

"Well, no, I don't think they suck myself, but see, I'm using this private corporation to get my speech out here, and it just happens to be brought to you by people who think Macy's and Toys 'R Us are the worse places in the country, and of course, they're going to say so before and after my speech. And oh yeah, I'm not responsible for that."

Sorry - no amount of disclaimers are relevant. The buck started, and stops, with Linden Lab.

If it were the president, bringing you his speech courtesy of people who will slam Macy's and Toys 'R Us, people would naturally insist he chose some other method.

And considering the Lindens are perfectly capable of putting up their own information system at the Infohubs, this excuse doesn't wash.

It merely adds insult to DEFINITE injury.

The Lindens need to get an employee or two to devote a couple hours to building their own information dispenser, if they want to put their information there.

I can't believe anyone is telling Anshe to suck it up here. No argument for sucking it up holds a drop of water.

It's an outrage, pure and simple.

coco

But Anshe, that place IS the worst place in SL. So I do believe that it's an accuracte description. You get way too defensive over a game from which you actualy managed to make a living.

What are you going to do next, whine about the new P2P feature that makes thousands of people's lives easier? ... oh wait... never mind.

Thank you thank you thank you

I think this whole thing is farking hysterical.. see its only bad if its not outta her mouth

lolololol

Ain't so much fun when the shoe's up your own ass

you are lowering the average intelligence of the sl community

I don't believe it for a minute: that the majority of people don't even know how to rez a cube in sl? Certainly I know that anyone I help to figure stuff out gets that before they leave the first hour of "intro to SL" (not a formal class, mind you, but just a normal hey there new player, have any questions? kind of thing).

I've never heard anyone in the welcome area say hey steer clear of these buildings because the build is awful. InfoNet was doing that for buildings and plans to expand that for products. And ya know what? It isn't a 3rd party doing it. It is InfoNet themselves planning to rate (rate/snub/slam) these products and to do so in the Welcome Center.

That is a problem. Constructive criticism is the kind of criticism people can grow from. Criticism that just bashes with substantial bias, no applied or evident reasoning, and no transparency about who is doing the bashing is just nasty bullying. period.

I have a BFA and MFA in arts and am well aware that artists need feedback. I also teach and am well aware that there is a huge difference between constructive criticism and pointless nastiness to make the talked about person feel and look bad and the talking person feel and look (what? mean?) I can only guess.

artemis, that's a very important passage you wrote when we consider freedom of speech in terms of RL politics.

the difference here is that SL is not RL politics. it's a game service. secondly, even if we allow for the "country" metaphor, in RL our governments guard free speech but the do not endorse or contract nazi propogandists.

i personally think this infonet has already proved it's worth for me in entertainment value. i look forward for it to supplant the forum for coercion tactics once LL closes down the forum.

That is... odd, isn't it?

"Tele-hub trapping" discussed at an information center where telehubs *used* to be?

This discussion is an odd one, indeed.




In some ways, Squagmire distancing himself from content control seems to be a wise, wise move. Perhaps not unlike what the Company does itself, when you start an online gambling establishment with 'fictional' currency.

If it were me... I would not like to be censoring what people submit to InfoNet- it may become an impossibly huge task someday, and why should the owner of the system become responsible for its users?

I wonder who actually did write the material in question - are they hiding behind Squagmire?

Perhaps the wisest move is to let Anshe's complaint to the Company proceed, and remove the data if and when the Company requests that it must go.

I'm not saying it's hard to rez a cube, i'm saying that a lot of the people I met don't care to try to learn anymore than that. They'd rather go to clubs, join BDSM communities, join griefer communities, have a little american-dream house with a family somewhere, or just socialize. Nothing wrong with any of that, my point was that there's a LOT of people who don't know anything about building or creating in SL that still hang around for other reasons.

I live next to the Welcome Area unfortunately, and whenever i've headed over there out of boredom all I hear is about how one person likes this and hates that and another thinks they're stupid and then an argument about that comes out inbetween gestured noises. If dealing with the idiots in the WA isn't a bad enough first impression for new players to scare them away then I don't think a few criticisms burried in an information terminal of legitimately bad practices is going to effect anything. Have you seen the second hell tourbus? The only entry as of yet is calling out the people who make giant obtrusive signs and builds to rope in customers. I know that annoys the hell out of a lot of people. Seems legitimate enough.



Even as an online entity, LL still allows in it's ToS to have opinions making a form of free speech as much as American law or other places. It limits free speech in terms of racism, hate speech, harrassment, and so forth. However, opinions and criticism, thinking someone's build or business practices are bad are allowed. LL is endorsing Infonet as much as America endorsed nazi propogandists. They gave them the right to use an area of space for their speech and the police to protect it. Refering to a former metaphor used in this thread. This is what it means to allow this to happen but not believe in it's views. That is, because the president allowed nazi's to organize and gave them the space, does that mean the president (Then, not bush, no bush bashing XD) was a nazi? No it means that he believed in free speech enough to allow everything and trusted the people enough to make their own decisions and beliefs.

And isn't that what the tourbus from hell does? When someone sees the entries in it do you think they're going to go: "Well that must be the absolute truth then" or do you think they're going to check it out (A plus for the people on the list: publicity) and make their own decisions? I know I did.

Agreed 120%.

Only 1 reason makes me say have the ARTICLE, not Second Hell, removed is because it is rather old. I've had my infoNET terminal in my home for about 2 months now and remember only seeing 2 articles, one wich has already been removed due to conflicting facts. Only problem with removing the current one is because there is no conflictions, its all true and I've visited them. Only relavence it currently has is that signs don't have to be 30m tall and non-phantom, other than that the information is out of date and should be removed.

Could you be more specific on this? What contracts? Where did I steal land?

I think you should apply for job as InfoNet writer. I think they will love you.

That's true actually.

Infonet shouldnt remove the article because of allegations of lies. Anyone who checked out these spots would know that what they said was absolutely true. It (and as Ron said, it alone) should be removed simply because it's outdated now. No telehubs anymore.

Might as well have an article complaining about how much it costs to rez prims or teleport places.

The question is not wether or not that Warmouth mall looks nice. Maybe it is even ugly. I don't mind somebody build us something nicer there, as long as it holds the vendors.

But calling somebody out on it is an issue, without even talk to that person. This happening in Linden feted setting. And even bigger issue is that this happens while none of my beautiful, interesting and high quality locations is listed in the proper categories. In the neutral "Malls" category my 20+ malls don't seem exist at all.

Place like Central Park, the Mature Sandbox, The Forest, A'ksha, Winter's Gate any many others are ignored. But about 100 sims worth of land, about more than 100 developments the only thing this InfoNet talks about is pick out the worst and bash it.

I think it needs time to flesh out. It was relatively unheard of until the controversy with the second hell tourbus started and it was announced that they'd be used in the telehubs.

Suffice it to say, that a LOT of places aren't mentioned.

Your mall was mentioned in the tourbus as only part of a larger subject of giant advertising signs that get in people's ways and malls that do likewise. It didn't even seem to mention the building quality of it nor put it as a main subject of it. Really the mall was a good example since it was both gigantic and obtrusive and surrounding a telehub.

But I think now that infonet is in telehubs, they're going to start getting more writers for the fame of it, and the content they have in it is going to start expanding.

Technically, they were calling the build out - not you specifically, Anshe.

Thats because people PAY to have their builds listed. Did you PAY GNAT to list your malls? Probly not.

Remember folks, infoNET is a business not a non-profit organisation. They are also NOT a news service, they are an information distribution service. Any and all information is submitted to them via 3rd parties.

And I don't remember the article "calling you out" Anshe. To me all you're doing is lashing out randomly because you're bitter you lost your telehubs wich you used to build up laggy malls and teletraps to give people a little push twoards your Dreamland sims to get away from said malls. You can deny it all you want, but this is my opinion and I'm entitled to it. Whether people believe in what I say is up to them, not me or you.

Fortunately, principles of free speech would not only approve this type of speech, but also yours. If you can spend the energy to come here and post, use your substantial land holdings to propogate your own notecard dispensers that contain pamphlets about the wonders of your own land holdings. Better yet, feel free to NOT mention the Warmouth mall! Since you spend so much time promoting your business and extolling the virtues of your developments, it would stand to reason that you expose yourself to a reasonable amount of criticism. Criticism, keep in mind, does not require the author to present the counterpoint to his or her arguments. Just imagine how the drafters of the Declaration of Independence would have felt had they been forced to draft the counterpoint to their own document.

Yes, that's a bit of hyperbole, but it seems apt given the fact that there is nothing stopping you from publishing your own views to the grid at large. While these InfoNet terminals are on Linden-owned land, they are not the ONLY media outlets allowed on that land (according to multiple Linden posts in multiple threads). If you are too busy managing your business to also manage your own news service or promotional department, hire more people, thus creating the jobs that the "non-contributor" population of SL could fill, as opposed to sitting in camping chairs.

Unless you are willing to posit that "land barons" are a protected class under the "no harassment" policies of the TOS, etc., I submit that you should use your own unique access to large amounts of land to publish your own views to the masses.

This is simply a modest proposal, one that does not involve consuming Irish babies to relieve poverty. All apologies to Jonathan Swift for the last sentence.

My problem isn't with InfoNet - its a cool piece of tech that Squagmire has created. My problem is that they're a resident run business - and the only one that's being allowed at the Infohubs on Linden land. This seems to break everything we've ever been told about Linden land - hell, the Second Life Community Convention wasn't allowed to use any Linden land for our promotions, and we are a non-profit!

I think freedom of speech and expression should be allowed on one's own land or where given permission - but the Lindens have to make a decision on whether or not this is going to be a level playing field or not. While I wouldn't call this slander - whether or not a build sucks is opinion, not slander - its certainly not appropriate for a Linden sanctioned area targeted towards new players.

Get InfoNet off, or do something like Busy Ben's / Luna to choose who gets to place their business items at the InfoHubs. That's only fair.

Regards,

-Flip

I thought, or what I understand from a few Linden posts on the subject. Is that anyone who has a publication that wants to put it up in the infohubs can, they have but to ask.

great!!!

i got a griefing lactating midget furry robot vampire gorean goosestepping lesbian troll with a gun who 'age plays while she is land baroning' porno series for the Linden channel I want to publish

Even though it's available through something on Linden land, chances are that the Lindens won't do anything about it.

Look at how many complaints have arisen from the Impeach Bush signs, the loss of traffic and revenue, people forced to move - and all because of these eyesores! Yet, the Lindens are refusing to remove them or give the residents the tools necessary so they can avoid seeing them (no matter what region they may be in).

Your theories intrigue me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.

they say there is a niche for everything

100L$ says that you can find someone in SL who fits all of those qualities, maybe one missing.

There is a sandwich-board type thing that says "Newspapers" on it, and shows a guy reading a newspaper, and in it, you can list your newspaper.

THAT is reasonable.

Infonet isn't a newspaper listed on this sandwich board. It gets a board all it's own! Called (if I'm not mistaken) "Linden Information." Of course you get disclaimers at least twice in the thing as to how nobody - not LL, and not Infonet - is actually responsible for what is in it.

So what we have is - what Flipper said. Read back and re-read his post if you don't remember it. I agree with it totally.

coco