Will there be any leadership on signage griefing?

OK, let's get down to brass tacks here and quit wagging our tongues:

Question: If LL got rid of the Impeach Bush signs today, and banned their creator, would you leave SL?

Maybe it offended your belief about liberty, or you thought they were too heavy-handed. Or you were making money off those signs somehow. Whatever the reason may be. Tell us: would you leave?

Now, ask the complimentary question:

If LL leaves those signs up and lets the creator make more, will you leave SL or reduce your activity within it?

My answer to the first: Nope. I'd rejoice.
My answer to the second: Yep. Already have.

My guess is that no one - or maybe an extreme few - will say yes to the first question, "liberty theory" notwithstanding.

Eh, wouldn't bother me much; truth be told, it'd improve the net beauty of my particular RL neighborhood.

That is correct. We know nothing except what the "rabble rousers" would have us believe. (And who are you, and what did you do with Jake?) The rabble rousers in this case are all the other residents of SL who are relaying their experiences. They could all be lying, yes. Is it likely? I don't think so.

We also know what we can see with our own eyes: Which is signs springing up, messages by this individual on his property descriptions, the sizes of these properties, the number of these properties, and the prices for sale put on these properties.

You are right that there are no zoning laws. And the government irl doesn't just enter and seize your property without due process. However, that IS the way this game works. They have before come and removed property, when they felt it was in sufficient interest to SL to do so. I believe this particular case falls within that same category.

coco

And yet obviously they have chosen not to, expressing a policy that says that LL will not interfere with builds by people on thier own land that don't interefere with the TOS. This is a good policy and makes me happy, even if it means putting up with these stupid signs.

If LL fouind an instance of grifing, they would and should deal with it.

If they have not responded to an AR that is an issue of enforcement, not policy.

I applaud LL's policy decision in this case. It conforms well with all our universal expectations to be allowed to build and say what we want on land we have bought.

This is not a quaestion really of if a TOS violation exists, LL has addressed this very issue and said they will do nothing. Now its just people complaining about ugly builds.

I have several I would complain about, and none of them say impeach bush.

I would just add that I would not be in favor of banning this individual; only of making him cease this activity.

coco

As this twit recently invaded my home sim, I took a little peek at the "About Land..." for the extortio-parcel. Mr. Twit has a land holding group (gotta love that 10% bump) which the Lindens "like" to roughly US$200/month for that holding group alone.

For a firm as cash hungry as LL, I'm not sure they can afford to stop this nonsense. If so, that's pretty sad. I don't think they are standing on free expression principles at all.

I did nothing with jake Coco. I have always maintained that people should be allowed to speak freely, even if the speach is unpopular. I do not want LL to set a precendet whereby others can be banned or have prortery taken because they have upset the forum mob. My position remains unchanged.

Your position would be very different if we were talking about banning your builds because someon does not like them.

I will always advocate that restraint and tolerance, even of that which we don't like are better than arbitrary and randomly removing something because a lot of people don't like it. I mean a lot of people don't like me, I don't want someone to have me banned because I am unpopular and speak my mind.

Although I believe we have already covered this material, Aimee, here it is again:

Disturbing the Peace
Every Resident has a right to live their Second Life. Disrupting scheduled events, repeated transmission of undesired advertising content, the use of repetitive sounds, following or self-spawning items, or other objects that intentionally slow server performance or inhibit another Resident's ability to enjoy Second Life are examples of Disturbing the Peace.

coco

well, as suggested in this thread and others, LL would dump such highminded "principle" in a nanosecond if bullheaded adherance to such policy drove enough well paying users out of SL who see this as nothing more than griefing unpunished.

Well, Jake, see, I agree with every last thing you have said above.

But where we disagree is that this is a case of someone's "freedom of speech" or someone's ability to build something as ugly as he likes. This case is primarily about land extortion.

coco

This is a great point, Jacqueline but I think you will find that the Lindens treat this as a catch-all to prevent punished users from bringing frivolous legal action against the Lindens based on TOS nit-picking. For example, a user banned for "harassment" could bring Linden Lab headaches by contesting the definition and context of "harassment." The catch-all clause avoids this kind of mischief.

And this doesn't answer the question, but simply rewords it. Do we want Lindens to use this clause routinely? Right now they don't. Instead a user must have violated a specific rule before the Lindens will act.

The alternative is to allow the Linden's human judgement to enter diciplinary matters. A Linden could look at these ugly signs and say "ok, this is bad for the game. I am using the catch-all clause here to put a stop to this." If you support Lindens making judgements calls beyond the TOS, write to the Lindens and express your support! If enough people express their desire for this kind of policy the Lindens will do it.

Maybe, but then LL seems to take a longer term view of this, and assumes, maybe corrcectly, that losing a few customers over these signs is better than losing many more when it gets around that LL will remove builds the forum community finds distateful.

Yes we have covered this and I still don't find these signs in violation of the TOS. I will itemize:

Disrupting scheduled events - no
the use of repetitive sounds - no
following or self-spawning items - no
objects that intentionally slow server performance - no

So that leaves us with the following two:

Repeated transmission of undesired advertising content.
The word "transmission" implies that this clause was intended to address something broadcasted on the public channel. But let's just assume this applies to signs. Remember what this user is going to do as soon as this clause is used to take down his signs. He is going to go to YOUR store and AR your sign because he considers it "undesired advertising content."

Inhibit another Resident's ability to enjoy Second Life
I for one can certainly think of someone who inhibits my ability to enjoy Second Life, though this clause is hardly enough to stop them.

Yes, I thought we had already had this conversation. And now, as then, I disagree with both your interpretation of the TOS in this instance, and with the scenario where if SL does something about this extortionary blight upon the land that the next thing that will happen is people will start demanding that everybody's shop sign be taken down.

coco

It doesn't speak or hand out notecards - or transmit anything - it doesn't disrupt events, it doesn't use sound, or rez objects - it doensn't slow down server performance intentinally... you MAY argue that it inhibits your ability to enjoy SL - but that hasn't worked to date - so LL may not see it as a major inhibitor.

Don't get me wrong - I wish it did. I personally don't like them or the tactics used to flog tiny plots of land - but rather than flog the wrong horse I'm looking for alternatives to get to the same ends...

We can assume by inaction that LL's hands are tied or they otherwise can't / won't deal with it..

So it's time to 'pop the tittie outta the mouth' so to speak and work on our own.

only the very loosest intrepretation of "build" encompasses this condition. the LLs just say this was the equivalent of yelling fire in a crowded theatre - cease and desist - and be done with it. if it gets around that LL will remove single prim grief "builds" on overpriced micro-parcels, so much the better.

I agree it's time to work on our own.

Seems to me that the best Linden solution (outside of using common sense, of course) would be to put a cap on the number of tiny plots an individual or group could own.

coco

Yet the facts remain uncontroverted: LL has made a decision and has advised of what it is. You have expressed your disagreement, fine. They obviously found no support for the argument this is griefing. Which leaves us where?

... that'll work right up until I get an alt. Or join a bunch of 16 squares into one "plot".

Nowhere. And that's why I announced a while back that I no longer cared about this issue. Yet here I am sucked up in it again! Cause it pisses me off, lol. But okay, I don't care about it (again). lol

coco

It leaves us where we were with spammers in the early '90s, when dozens of ISPs said spam was nothing to worry about, and they weren't going to block the spammer's free speech.

This is the "Green Card Lottery Spam" of virtual reality.

This isn't spam. This isn't pop ups. And really SL is not an ISP. The analogy is totaly misplaced. SL is a platform of some sort, and sells and markets itself as a virtual world. this individual bought land and put up a build with a texture. Noboy like s the texture, fine. But neverthelss it is his virtual land and LL is respecting thier interpretation of his right to do what he wants on his land.

No, he could not do this IRL. However IRL has much more sophisticated procedures to deal with this, all of which pertain to protection of a speaker due process before his speech is curtialed. We do not have that here, and LL does not want to have that.

We can kvetch in the forums about it all we want, but that is neither here nor there.
As a policy LL made a solid decsision, and apparently final one. The Sl response stated in no undertain terms they would not remove builds by residents on their own land. Building something on your land that does not directly attack another user is not a tos violation, according to LL.

Now the question becomes one of whether this build is griefing, which everyone seems to say it is, but then noone offers any evidence other than the builds are ugly and next door. So if you want leadership on the sinage issue you must look to LL's enforcement procedures and investigation procedures. Do you think they did not do a good job in investigatig this guy, and thus concluded he was not griefing, or are they ignoring all the hoopla here in the forums and just not responding to residents concerns?

What stepd in enforcement of the tos should they take. What would you want them to do before they took land you built on? This is the way to analyze this issue: assume LL wants to take your land. What do you want them to have to do before they do? Or is having and ugly build enough justification for them to take your house?

Of course, to use those oft cited arguments in other threads on these forums, if you don't like it, you can play there. Or how about LL does what it wants, they have said what they want, deal with it?

can someone explain this to me:

How is this different from the plot of land a few months back with the two building identical towers and a plane crashing into it? Wasn't that banned and not causing anyone harm? Wasn't it taken down out of a "moral outcry"?

It isnt' in my eyes - was that build taken down by the owner or by the lindens? I remember one being taken down by the owner due to peer pressure - don't know if thats it or not.

I can understand some things being taken down - that lovely goatse pic for instance - doubly so in a PG sim.

I think Community Standard "Big Six" Number 5 may apply...



The twin towers build certainly depicted violence but mostly it was broadly offensive.

One could make the case that a build that is "ugly" is broadly offensive, but that would be a tough sell on the aesthetic merits alone. You could also say that the sentiments of "impeaching bush", or "ending the illegal war in Iraq" are broadly offensive, but that too is a tough sell given what I suspect is a large number of SL users that agree whole heartedly with those sentiments.

There is no doubt that the Lindens had to make some judgement calls here. But I think it may have been an easier call to declare a build depicting the mass murder of around 3K humans as "broadly offensive" compared to "impeach bush."