Unbiased Poll: Impeach-Bush Signs and Freedom of Speech

Here's a poll that will provide folks with a few other options in regards to the impeach-bush-sign controversy.

~Ulrika~

I am pleased you have returned to us.

But your new avatar is... well, can we have the bunny back?

Technological fixes good

governmental fixes bad

I can't seem to find that bunny anywhere, so I'll go with this new one for a while.

~Ulrika~

There are many problems (involving people), where technological fixes lead nowhere. Or at least, they're hard to do, or are hurting legitimate people.

For example, remember the classifieds in SL.

First it was sorted alphabetically. People began gaming it, like putting '!!!!' in the start of the string, thereby getting up to the top.

Then they banned the '!' and numbers as starting letters. People started putting 'A' characters in it.

Finally, they made it so who pays more is on the top. Well, this is straightforward, cannot be gamed.. but... thus the classifieds lost the appeal, now it's 'who has the most money', not 'who brought out a new product, or made anything that might be cool'.

Well, maybe we can call 'who has the most money' fair. At least that's how it works in RL. And it's not that far from that in SL either. The bush guy spent hundreds of USD's on his project.

Oh, and besides: in RL, intent and context can make or break judgement and sentence.

Perhaps your perception is due to my oversimplification. The "Technological" solutions are governmental in that they are implemented by the Linden oligarchy (government) as a blunt technological solution. The "Governmental" fixes attempt to inject humanity into the problem to allow finer control over our solutions. Thus they are all governmental but one category is "blunt/inhuman" and the other is "fine/human".

I've once again forgotten the strange aversion to fine-grain human control over our collective destiny (government) and have in the process created another poll doomed to fail due to biases. I tell you we have a wonderful government in Neualtenburg and it works like a charm for stuff like this sign.

~Ulrika~

I do not understand the need to bring real life politics into the realm of SL. People come in to escape all the crap from the outside world, not to have it hanging on to coat tails in a game.

As for my personal views on Bush..all I can say is, The people of the United States voted Him in, they are the only ones that can vote Him out. So next election time..do just that, but to subject the rest of the world to the internal politics I do not see as a productive device in solving Your issues with Government.

Hell if You really want rotten government..please come take ours..LOL.

Have a super day *smiles*

I opted for the first 2. The first, because it also protects my own 'right' to protest in any fashion within the TOS, and the second because there are a lot of repetitive things I would block out if I had the option, the Bush signs being only 1 of them.

Ok, let me clarify my stance, my plumping for the "technological fixes" is because using those MY freedom to build what i want on my land is not affected, the so called "governmental fixes" could concievebly mean, if my neighbours all want middle american suburbia created, complete with prim lawns and pink flamingos, which i most certainly dont want to, my builds could be removed as not conforming with their vision, so no, no misinterpretation ulrika, youre definitions merely fitted what i considered the acceptable options

If i want to live in a safe, zoned place, ill rent in the private islands .....

the chaos of the mainland appeals to me

Excellent point. I see what you're getting at.

~Ulrika~

Ty Ulrika, and by the way, its nice to see your old avatar back

This one looks odd, like there is a technical problem

You had one that was some cute anime face , or something along those lines.

-- Edit
I bet it is my monitor setting, I was trying to make my old monitor be clearer on the text

I have a couple of options to add:

1) Disallowing certain parcels from being placed on land sales. If it says "do not buy this land" on it and the person themself says he/she really isn't looking to sell the land, why is spamming the land sales allowed?

2) Allowing a minimal number of repetitive signs on a plot that small (if he has different signs, fine, just quit repeating that same blue cube - aesthetics is lost on some)

The use of the phrase virtual covenants seem a bit odd.

Telling the system not to display items made by a particular person or on a particual parcel doesn't involve a covenant so far as I can see.

I voted for 4 and 6 as the only ones that seem reasonable and not likely to cause even more problems down the line. I believe that the road of dis-allowing content based on avatars or even lots is a bad one and can only led to the destruction of whatever tiny bit of community still exists. Imagine us all sitting on our own little virtual plots only able to see what we already find agreable. This is rose coloured glasses in another form. I prefer to live in a community and look at scabs and sores once in a while. I do think that the signs have broken the community covenant such as it is though and for that reason I think as a community we should get rid of them.

The only problem I have with this thread, as I have with other threads on the topic and the Linden response to the signs in general is that I dont think this issue has anything at all to do with free speech.

Seeing this argument in terms of "if we ban lazarus's signs we are (or have to) limit everyones free speech" implies that he is making a political statement about George Bush that we should not stop him from making. I think it's really quite clear that this is not the case at all despite he sign makers attempts to pose that way.

The signs should, and could be banned on the basis of a pattern of activity that closely resembles standard extortion practices. The content of the signs and the message on them is irrelevant, the banning should procede on the basis of the sign-makers overall pattern of behaviour. I believe that the TOS is already strong enough to deal with this.

On a side note it's interesting to see that the simplest technological solution, that of simply dissalowing signs on empty lots hasn't even been mentioned till now even though huge numbers of people find the "for sale" signs equally horrid. Although I cant see how you would determine an "empty" lot from a developed one.

I initially thought the same thing, and then I remembered that it would effectively negate the "sell objects with land" option that a lot of people had asked for.

The problem I have with option #4 is that it forces any land for sale to be dead weight to whoever is selling it, and therefore unusable tier. I own around half a sim where I have my store(group owned, but the tier is all carried by one person), and although I have no plan to move anytime in the near future, I don't like the idea of having to remove everything from the land before I could set it for sale. If we decide to buy a sim, I would have to own a sim and a half until all of my Gallinas land sold, while it made me no money to help cover the extra tier.

I agree. I also don't like the per-lot virtual covenant idea as when one files prims will pop in and out of view just as parcel music pops in and out.

This is something I offered as a solution months ago for the for-sale-sign controversy of '05. It could be an inconvenience for those selling structures along with land, however.

~Ulrika~

Often in RL communities and in SL zones with government, covenants are used to contractually limit what can and can not be placed on a parcel of land. Whether it's Jeb's engine block, Sue's above-ground pool, or Ulrika's massive prim fountain, communities with covenants attached to their deed can limit what can and can't be placed on individuals' lots. (Neualtenburg uses deeds with covenants to take care of such problems.)

I called it a per-avatar or per-lot virtual covenant as it is a technological stand-in for what really should be implemented as sim-wide or SL-wide covenant. Although this is beyond the scope of your question, I feel that as long as humanity is removed from legislation and enforcement (no government) there will only be imperfect blunt technological solutions such as "texture muting" that will in turn will create their own problems.

~Ulrika~

I voted for disallowing objects on land for sale.

This is the simplest "fix", it removes any incentive for the anti-bush signs to be used as a way to make money for someone, while allowing him to continue the signs if he feels the need.

It doesn't resolve the situation of the ugly landscape, but it takes away profit as a possible motive.

I voted none of the options, since none were "kick them in the bits".

I realize my solution is barbaric, violent, and ultimately impractical, but I'd feel a lot better!

This poll is biased: 4 tech options, 3 gov

Yes. Even as I was writing the post I had reservations about "forcing" land to be blank. It has a lot of practical problems that I cant think of workarounds for as Jonquille and toast pointed out.

I still think that LL can legally and within the TOS just chuck the guy out for concerted griefing through land extortion or intolerance. Others have been thrown out for less.

I am currently assuming that the guy threatened legal action as a pre-emptive block (a wise thing to do on his part), and they caved on it. If there is one thing certain about the guy is that he seems to know enough about psychology to manipulate people in that way so it seems like a thing he might do.

I see signs of him getting bored with the whole thign though. I mean he has won already. What else is there to do? I predict he will either leave or eventually (and maybe soon) make peace with the community and let himself be absorbed.

It is not a covenant at all.
The word choice is just plain wrong.

Being able to tell the program not to display the objects on a nearby parcel does not involve a binding agreement between parties in any way that resembes a covenant.

Setting a block parcel preference none of either the letter of the spirit of a covenant.

Using Adblock to block an image from displaying on a webpage does not involve a covenant.

Blocking textures and objects in SL is like blocking an URL or an image on a web page.

There is no binding agreement, and hence no need for an agency to enforce the agreement.

I hope you can appreciate that being someone who has participated in the creation of a successful virtual-world government in SL, that I would draw from that experience. For us this problem has been solved over a year ago with the creation of a covenant to which citizens are legally bound. Signs like this are not a problem.

I understand that my SL-as-virtual-world paradigm (and requisite vocabulary) conflicts with your SL-as-digital-content paradigm and encourage you to call the described solutions a content filter, if you are more comfortable with that analogy. I don't, however, want to debate the verity of competing paradigms.

~Ulrika~