Should LL take legal action against griefers?

These latest prim-flooding attacks got me thinking, if you're paying hundreds of dollars for a hosting service and someone comes to vandalize your content, well im sorry but that is a crime.
Shouldnt LL report these idiots to the feds?

isnt it odd how we only see OUR side of things...

thx for making me laugh first thing in the am

and thx for bringing some balance in eggy.

i will never understand why we silly humans are just NEVER satisfied

lilone, if someone vandalizes your website and deletes all your pages, that is, legally, a crime. These people are usually called hackers, or more recently, cyberterrorists.
Why should SL be any different? People pay a LOT more for this 3D content hosting service than they would pay for a web hosting service.

If LL won't sue, maybe the residents can find some kind of grounds for legal action. Face it, LL seems to be petrified of taking any kind of action that would end up in court.

I'm not voting, because the Yes/No is not a broad enough set of choices.

LL should only pursue legal action in extreme cases. Causing hundreds of builds to vanish completely, for example. Or bringing down the entire grid. Or "other things" which I won't mention, for fear of giving people ideas.

Jerky? certainly. Actionable? I think that is a little less clear. Moreover, in order to get a crime prosecuted in the US (a opposed to a civil action) you usually have to get a district attorney interested enough to prosecute. As this is difficult for matters of little RL consequence, even if LL wanted to initiate criminal proceedings I think they'd be hard pressed to find a DA who would understand or think that griefing abstract objects off a shared server to be not worth bothering with.

For practical purposes, banning is LL's most feasible action by far. As I've heard more than one attorney say, "unfortunately, being a jerk is not against the law". This principle has saved me much jail time.

I suspect the Lindens will need to get more involved in settling griefing. I know their vision is for players to govern themselves, but the reality is, the consequences for griefing are laughable. A warning, a suspension, all the rest of it, which only seems to be applied to extreme matters where the Lindens absolutely can't ignore the action, is completely ineffective if you know a thing or two about networking and can just get a friend to pay for another account. Phil once said his faith was bruised; I guess he never played another MMORG or he would have seen all this coming. Many, many people enter the world with no other intent than to cower behind anonymity as they ruin your game experience.

If you retaliate, no matter how justly, by pursuing that player to the ends of the grid, distributing banishers so that this person's ability to travel is limited and/or locking up entire sims against their presence, and hunting that player until they simply log off, then YOU wind up getting the warning and suspension. The land tools are ineffective; a griefer just needs to go up a few meters to resume. Back in the day I supplied banishers to a girl that was being harassed endlessly, she owned about half a sim. Abuse reports got her nowhere. She placed those banishers in such a manner that basically these people had to go around the sim. The Lindens FORCED her to shut down the banishers, and they got back up to their old tricks. Two of these players are still in the game.

The only entity in SL that has any ability at all to apply consequences to deliberate harassment and abuse of the SL mechanics are the Lindens. So, we wait while the abuse reports pile up, eventually the Lindens may or may not do something, in the meantime, we just have to take it. People griefed me in Natoma in an attempt to get me to move for well over a week before they finally actually did anything.

If Linden refuses to allow you to retaliate to the best of your ability, they need to step up, put the resources in place, and handle griefing much more decisively and quickly. Basically, a wait of several days, even one, to discontinue harassment or an attack is unacceptable. Buy a sim and lock 'em out? Private island? Hey SL is fun and interesting but I'm not going to spend more than 20 or so bucks a month on it, and being forced to do so just to avoid griefing is unreasonable to say the least.

I think SL is more pre-web AOL than a web host, which makes the situation for land "owners" less clear. I'd imagine deliberately disrupting an electronic service like SL by bringing down a server is a crime. If LL isn't going to pursue legal action against those people, it's hard to imagine them going after these prim flood types.

Eggy, while I've generally agreed with the opinions I've seen you post here in the past, I'm personally unconvinced that legal action would be the best countermeasure in this case. Not because what's being done isn't wrong, granted - but because I feel this would not hold up well in court.

That said, a part of the reason I feel the Lindens do not generally embroil themselves directly in conflict resolution of this sort is that selfsame amorphous base on which they could file charges. That, and Lindens are not the strict equivalent of CSRs - so oftentimes they just don't have time to address every person's individual problem.

In this case, I would like to posit the following example. Let us assume that sim ABC contains a fully-featured set out of the movie Batman. An attacker then swoops down (pun intended) onto the sim and, running one of these self-replicators, destroys the sim. The owner of sim ABC, understandably upset, files charges.

Now, while I'm no resident expert in legal proceedings, I can tell you that International Laws of Copyright would not smile favorably on the sim owner, especially if his sim was established for the sale of Batman costumes that were then converted over the GOM into real dollars. I realize that, in the past, you've been fairly good at addressing issues of this sort, Eggy - so I don't feel the need to go further into explaining the details as you probably already have a good grasp of them.

And, while I'm aware that many sim owners do, indeed, practice their rights legally and free of infringement, I can only point to the fact that that legitimacy on the part of the sim owner is dilute in the face of many owners that feel it fine to practice otherwise. Nor am I saying the sale of, using the example, Batman avatars is a bad thing - I'm simply pointing out that from a strictly legal standpoint, it's not smiled upon.

That said, current solutions to the problem at hand are as follows:

1) First and foremost, the Lindens will need to address the problem directly at the server side. This should go without saying, but I'll personally see if I can get ahold of one of the Lindens I know well and lay this problem out to them. I find communication is integral in issues like this.

2) As for protecting your sim, ladies and gentlemen, I will suggest you post a notice to anyone who uses your sim to please take a copy of their build to stave off the possibility of an attack. Since it's possible to literally take a copy of entire builds, regardless of linking behaviors and (I think) the number of prims involved (for example, I have a copy of my 800-plus prim build in JAVA) - this could be thought of as storing a system backup in the event something happens to your computer.

3) At the very least, let the Lindens know in-world, abuse report any and all people involved, and let fellow sim owners know. I realize many feel this is a system without teeth, and I quite frankly cannot stand for or against it, but doing something is better than doing nothing - just don't overreact.

I tend to agree with Moleculor. I think this creates a very slippery slope, not least of which is that griefing (to some degree) is in the eye of the beholder. True, extreme cases warrant action, but to involve the RW legal system might result in some very unexpected and possibly unpleasant repercussions.

I don't think criminal charges by LL would stick unless they could show willful sabotage of their service, and even then, I think it would usually be more of a civil suit situation.

I think any member could sue another member for griefing ("harrassment", however, and subpeona LL to reveal the RL identity. Possibly involve LL in a restraining order, where they'd have to provide some guarantees that the griefer would not be able to approach the victim, etc. Enough of those, and LL might start to take a more active stance on griefing (and alts). It would become worth their while to stay out of court.

But it's going to be a difficult couple of first cases to drag through the courts, and probably expensive. If several victims of the same griefer could get together and mount their suit as a group, that could help to defray the costs, perhaps.

The griefer problem can be dealt with by LL in a couple of ways. In Bartle's article on Mud player types, which I think is fairly relevant to SL, though not perfectly so, he recommends:



I don't think we want to decrease achievers (those who are trying to earn $L and compete for social standing), or socializers, but we could work to increase the number of explorers (which in Bartle's terminology includes expert builders and scripters), for exactly the reason Tcoz gave: expert scripters and builders can figure out ways to make life extraordinarily difficult for griefers. But for that to work, LL has to stop applying a double standard. Either let people inworld deal with the problems, or toss the griefers out much sooner, using some due process, but not letting them keep hassling people.

Neko
(No, I'm not a lawyer. I am, however, being sued in RL, and I've been forced to learn rather more about our legal system than I wanted to.)

I don't know if 'taking legal action' is the right approach, but yeah, it's pretty clear that the lindens aren't going to do it. I don't think scripters have the tools required to do anything but egg griefers on currently. This is where a player run government would be useful. There has GOT to be a greater willingness on all parts to remove troublesome accts. from SL completely.

You can't have anarchy without having a bunch of anarchists running around. And you can't have a 'benevolent dictatorship' if all the dictator does is observe and not take action.

Uhh... sure. Why not.

"You can't have anarchy without having a bunch of anarchists running around. And you can't have a 'benevolent dictatorship' if all the dictator does is observe and not take action."

Well said. Mr. Linden, we love your game. But your abuse department SUCKS!! Please fix it?

I think that if someone uses a back door to access a Linden server and directly destroys content in that manner then yes, Lindens should prosecute. ie; a legitimate hack.

However if someone has paid Lindens the fee to be in Second Life and then goes into SL and does something like lower or raise someone's land, that could be considered part of the "game playing" by the courts. It certaintly is not hacking.

I'm not avocating this griefing by any means and I think that the account should be permanently banned by the Lindens but criminal prosecution for hacking?

I think if that were to happen than I would probably not be in SL any longer just for fear of doing one thing as a joke or accidently that would initiate this action. Frankly, it would not be worth the risk.

A classic example of a person who creates fantastic content and had no intention of griefing was Lordfly and his Zombies. Should he have been taken to court? How long would people as creative as him remain in SL if they thought they would be taken to court for a good intention creation that got out of hand?

Not that I support griefers, but there is a TOSS and most of the problems could be solved by the Lindens giving people better Land Management tools and then suspending the accounts of anyone who do this sort of thing. Bring the courts or law enforcement into Second Life would change it from being a "dream" into a "nightmare".

One thing, not all players live in America (*gasp!*). How would they be able to take legal action against those people?

voted comedy option "Yes"

It'll happen eventually. Mark my words

I think the key thing would be establishing:

* What exactly IS 'Griefing'
* What current laws does this violate?

Harassment is an interesting angle. I know you can quite easily get a harassing phonecalls conviction, harassing emails, letters, stalking... Actions in a game I'm not sure about, as you could argue the person subjects themselves to the abuse by logging on, then you can counter argue nobody should be denied the right to a happy service by the actions of the few... It could go on and on...

Denial / Disruption of service is a new offence in the UK aimed at hitting distributed denial of service offenders, though I haven't read the fine print, so I'm not sure how well 'denial of service' is defined, and if you could pin 'griefing' to this...

And finally, let's not forget griefing is a made up word in legal terms. You must first strictly define EXACTLY what does and does not constitute griefing under law. Who gets to say that? I'm not sure. I suppose the prosecution could make their own definition, and have a judge amend it in court, or the term griefing may be dismissed as it is not a legal term mentioned in any current applicable laws.

Either way, you're guranteed a fun few YEARS in court as all the above is debated fiercely by lawyers and judges. And by the end, if the judge makes a ruling you may set a legal precedent for what is law inside a virtual space.

You're a griefer in RL?

In cases like this then (vandalising someones build or land) there should be fines taken from the griefers Linden Dollar account and paid to the victim(s).

For those of you who may be a little distracted, I said in the first post that I am specifically referring to these latest prim-flooding attacks, as seen on this thread:
/120/a8/33740/1.html

I sincerely believe the people behind this should be put behind bars. If you just ban a griefer he will simply make a new account.

I strongly disagree that anyone doing these griefer attacks should go to a prison.

While the effect of these attacks may be annoying, Second Life is essentially a simulated environment and the 'attacks' are simulated too. The worst someone should suffer as far as prison goes, is to have their avatar put in a virtual prison, though I fully support a griefer being denied access to the Second Life service.

I just do not support the idea that the play actions you can undergo in a virtual space should ever lead you to be inside a real bricks and mortar prison. I think this is highly inappropriate.

Actually that is a really cool idea - perhaps the Lindens should envoke a fine in Linden dollars (stated in advance for destructive griefing), in addition to the banning. This stays within the game and does not venture into the RL courts or involve legal entanglements. Particularly if the Lindens state up front that specific types of griefing will result in a fine and banning.

Permanent banning, and some fining is punishment enough.