Privacy (at least some) should be a Human Right in Second Life, too!

Permission for this sort of thing is given to Linden Labs, who I trust to act with some discretion and tact, and mostly use it in an agragate form internally, without names.

just to play devil's advocate here.... in another thread you offered to provide a script that will gather information for a store owner about who comes to their shop. How is this any different?

Does taht store script also publish that information to a website for anyone to see, or even for a list of subscribers to see? Does it also track every other place that you go, possily in your own home, and report what other individuals you 'meet'? A script that tells a store owner who came to his shop is relatively harmless. It makes no assumptions about what it is collecting, or who else those people interacted with. I would expect the store script's data is only accessible to the store owner.

so some data gathering is more equal than others?
you can't be half pregnant - you are either against data gathering or you arent.

Oh I completely disagree. Prizeballs and payballs for instance collect data as to whom is in the vacinity. HARDLY the same thing.

well like I said I am just playing devil's advocate and yes your are right, but where do we draw the line though?

so some data gathering is more equal than others?
you can't be half pregnant - you are either against data gathering or you arent.

In addition to abiding at all times by the Community Standards, you agree that you shall not: (i) take any action or upload, post, e-mail or otherwise transmit Content that infringes or violates any third party rights; (ii) impersonate any person or entity, including, but not limited to, a Linden Lab employee, or falsely state or otherwise misrepresent your affiliation with a person or entity; (iii) take any action or upload, post, e-mail or otherwise transmit Content that violates any law or regulation; (iv) take any action or upload, post, e-mail or otherwise transmit Content as determined by Linden Lab at its sole discretion that is harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, causes tort, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous, invasive of another's privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable; (v) take any actions or upload, post, e-mail or otherwise transmit Content that contains any viruses, Trojan horses, worms, spyware, time bombs, cancelbots or other computer programming routines that are intended to damage, detrimentally interfere with, surreptitiously intercept or expropriate any system, data or personal information; (vi) take any action or upload, post, email or otherwise transmit any Content that would violate any right or duty under any law or under contractual or fiduciary relationships (such as inside information, proprietary and confidential information learned or disclosed as part of employment relationships or under nondisclosure agreements); (vii) upload, post, email or otherwise transmit any unsolicited or unauthorized advertising, or promotional materials, that are in the nature of "junk mail," "spam," "chain letters," "pyramid schemes," or any other form of solicitation that Linden Lab considers in its sole discretion to be of such nature; (viii) interfere with or disrupt the Service or servers or networks connected to the Service, or disobey any requirements, procedures, policies or regulations of networks connected to the Service; (ix) attempt to gain access to any other user's Account or password; or (x) "stalk", abuse or attempt to abuse, or otherwise harass another user. Any violation by you of the terms of the foregoing sentence may result in immediate and permanent suspension or cancellation of your Account. You agree that Linden Lab may take whatever steps it deems necessary to abridge, or prevent behavior of any sort on the Service in its sole discretion, without notice to you.

My computers are in the kennel where the dogs are

You want to gather data for personal use, fine. A security orb should be able to tell it's owner what banned people attempted to gain entry to the protected space. A store owner should be able to determine who his customers are, or who used his vending systems.

You want to publish that data for others to see, without the express consent of those listed, not fine. That is a completely different matter, as now you are revealing information about other people's activities to third parties, without concent. If you published a web page listing all the people your security orb teleported home today, I'd abuse report that.

The TOS gives Linden Labs access to my data, not any and all unspecified third parties. Any third party should only get that data directly from Linden Labs, to "operate, improve and protect the Service". For example, a credit card company as needed to bill for services.

Also in the TOS (emphasis is mine):
These watches contain spyware that reports personal data without consent. They violate the TOS.

6.2 Linden Lab may observe and record your interaction within the Service, and may share aggregated and other general information (not including your personal information) with third parties.

You acknowledge and agree that Linden Lab, in its sole discretion, may track, record, observe or follow any and all of your interactions within the Service. Linden Lab may share general, demographic, or aggregated information with third parties about our user base and Service usage, but that information will not include or be linked to any personal information without your consent.

As you can see here, they explicity exclude "personal information" from third party sharing, but not your actions within the service. This tells me they consider the two data sources separate and independent. A developer could thus argue that the provided LSL functions that send this data operate within this section of the ToS, since LL designed them.

I can find nothing in the ToS that is even close to suggesting that avatar behavior is equivalent to personal information. Even the Community Standards fail to make this equivalence. There might be an argument in ToS 4.1 about "stalking" behaviors, but that would be a mighty stretch since the web site owner isn't necessarily anywhere around.

This will probably boil down to a decision by LL as to whether it is OK or not, and if not, a crippling of the associated LSL functionality. Hopefully, that doesn't break too much content.

just to play devil's advocate here.... in another thread you offered to provide a script that will gather information for a store owner about who comes to their shop. How is this any different?

I just considered a game like SL, with is scripting and creation and stuff, this kinda stuff is bound to happen. I considered it would be a norm for the folks who love stats and stuff to be thriving over this type of thing in SL. To me its kinda like going to watch a car race and then complaining its too loud - it comes with the territory.

This is an argument that troubles me, and it's one that I see continually in these threads. Esentially, that it's possible to abuse people's privacy in SL, so people should just let it happen and get over it.

Personally, I don't agree with it. This is the camel's nose. Invasions of privacy have a starting point, if you don't say *NO* when it starts, then it *will* become unmanagable. This is where you determine what is and is not acceptable in a culture. Rollover passively and take it everytime someone wants to take away some of your privacy and they'll leep doing it, and it will keep getting worse.

I don't do that. I'm saying not only no but hell no no, and I'll do it every time someone tries to take away some of my privacy without my permission. If enough people do it, maybe eventually people will start to get the message. Even if they don't refrain because they care about other people's privacy, maybe they'll refrain because it's just such a pain in the ass to deal with it when they don't.

It's a visitor counter. It is in fact provided in a 4 prim version by LL itself, made and released by a Linden. And it's different in that that information goes to that one person themself, and it records only who was on *their* property, with no time information provided as to *when* the person was there.

If someone were scattering them all over LL, and had hacked them to tell *when* people passed by them, and then collected that information and organized it to tell who was near *who* at what time, and published it on an extermal web site...*then* the cases might be comperable. But not until then.

Maybe in RL that might apply, but this is a private owned "game." Obviously you people haven't skimmed over the TOS. LL can do anything they wish, and you have already agreed to it.

I don't wanted to imply, that SLstats is doing something illegal in the context of Second Lifes current meager law system, but it would be illegal in many RL jurisdictions (and bad business practice) if they would do similar things in RL.

Maybe in RL that might apply, but this is a private owned "game." Obviously you people haven't skimmed over the TOS. LL can do anything they wish, and you have already agreed to it.

Maybe in RL that might apply, but this is a private owned "game." Obviously you people haven't skimmed over the TOS. LL can do anything they wish, and you have already agreed to it.

I am still waiting to hear back from the guy about opting out, and would expect a confirmation that this has been done.

It crossed my mind for a moment, when I first bought this subject to the community's attention, that perhaps I was just overreacting. It seems like I was not.

Lewis

I am still waiting to hear back from the guy about opting out, and would expect a confirmation that this has been done.

It crossed my mind for a moment, when I first bought this subject to the community's attention, that perhaps I was just overreacting. It seems like I was not.

Lewis

I am still waiting to hear back from the guy about opting out, and would expect a confirmation that this has been done.

It crossed my mind for a moment, when I first bought this subject to the community's attention, that perhaps I was just overreacting. It seems like I was not.

Lewis