Question on the rules I have "violated" Please read.

Exactly *what* does the picture of Hitler have to do with this? You did not clearly layout the connection between the Hitler picture and your issues in Jessie. So, what does his picture have to do with it?

Whether you like it or not, Hitler is offensive to most people in this world. A single person who was responsible for the killing of millions is a monster, plain and simple.


**edit**
OK, after having read through the whole thread (which I should've done before posting!), I see what you were attempting to show.

I agree with others in that you made a poor decision on the imagery you chose.

Probably not, considering that the Jessie Wall was built because of simular reasons ( see https://secondlife.com/notes/2003_07_07_archive.php#20030707
the Jessie War for a full explanation).

The wall was there as a barrier to the outlands before it all. The wall incident and removal of the items on the wall created some of the damage. Some prims were left public and were deleted by.. whomever. The Lindens could fix it, they just need to be asked to.

The conversation I had with Jeff Linden he also said this
Jeff Linden: Pictures that depict political content without any racist aspects will not be considered hate speech.

Although I am currently trying to find this in the rules, he is the one who said it. If the rule included or had anything to do with Hitler I would have taken it down. Maybe this will prevent futher actions from happening if they fixed it to where it does.

In that case, lets begin by taking Andrew Jackson off the US twenty dollar bill. it is a slap in the face to Native Americans every time they use it to make purchases. We'll call that option A.

But thats silly. How about we just accept that some people are going to be offensive, get rid of the thought police and deal the occasional discomfort that comes hand in hand with both free speech and the right of private ownership? Lets call that option B.

I prefer option (b) .. but be sure to keep option (a) in mind when arguing against displaying portaits on moral grounds.

In other words, keep it real.

-AP

he wasnt doing the sieg heil

A little piece of advice... just because Jessie is damage-enabled (or as EQ junkies would call it, PvP) DOESN'T mean that you can just go in there guns blazing. All it means that the possibility exists that you could die and be teleported to your home location.

Fuel, you went in there shooting people for no reason, and you expected people to be OK with it? If you answer yes to this question, then you have a lot of growing up to do.

Would you like it if I came to your house and shot you, then said, "Hey, the world is damage enabled... deal with it"? No, you wouldn't... you'd be mad as heck, and would want to retaliate. Same goes for people in Second Life.

So, after you ticked off a ton of people and they decided to retaliate, you complain and put up an image of a man who commited possibly some of the worst atrocities in recorded history and tacitly compared the Peacekeepers to this man... and you want people to feel sorry for your supposed problem? The answer to that question is emphatically NO!!!

There is an old saying that fits with your situation in Jessie:

"You dug your own grave, now lie in it".

Fuel, you seem like the type of person to go into a PvP server in EQ, kill a few members of a large guild who were not actively invoved in combat at that moment, get attacked and killed by other members of that guild, then go whine about getting killed by that guild's members and post on their boards that the guild were Nazi-esque in their actions... which I think that people on that board would respond with the letters S, T, F and U (in that order).

There have been other protests about things in Second Life that were done with respect and even for fun (Americana comparing Richard Linden to Mad King George during the tax revolt, and calling Hamlet Linden a "redcoat spy", but your choice of an image of a man who most if not all of the SL community consider quite offensive was poor taste to say the very least.

If you wanted to use an image to protest the monopolization of Jessie by the Peacekeepers, I think the better choice would have been Bill Gates... EVERYBODY would have seen your point then

Bye bye for now,
Alexis

The first 4 or 5 times i went into jessie i didnt even have a gun out and got killed. So i go back and shoot people, the people i shot all had guns. I did shoot up an event which i am very sorry for doing i did not realize thier was an event going on, and again i apoligize for it. I may have shot a few unarmed people during a gun fight with the peacekeepers, but i had like 4 or 5 people vs me so i shot pretty much anyone i saw. If i killed you and you were just wondering around sorry.

Fuel, you didn't kill me... I don't go over to Jessie, due to being involved with the original Jessie/WWIIOLer dispute way back in Beta. I also know that it is completely damage enabled, so I stay away from there... that's not my thing in SL. If I want PvP action, I play Planetside,Quake 3 Arena, or Crimson Skies on XBox Live.

As for the Peacekeepers owning most of the land in Jessie, it's probably because a good number of them are left from the original Beta dispute and bought the land up... it's not because it's some sort of conspiratorial monopoly... just that they have been inworld for a long time.

Heck, if anyone has a monopoly on any land, it would be the Lindens, who have the power to just take your land and own it themselves if they so choose... but they are much more benevolent than that.

Fuel... maybe you should appologize to the Peacekeepers, but I think that you have done so much damage with that sign that it might be best that you just stay away from Jessie altogether for a while. Just a humble suggestion.

Bye bye for now,
Alexis

Im not staying away from jessie half the fun of online games is killing other people. Me and the peacekeepers already came to a "peace" treaty. So there shouldnt be anything else going to happen i deleted the hitler texture, sure i could upload another one but im not going to for the sake of SL.

Well Jessie is called a lawless sim for a reason. If you choose to live there, be ready to pay for it by the griefers or trouble makers that enter it and cause problems. No one should promote the stupidity that goes in there but at the same time it humors me to hear people complaining about being shot in it for no reason.

Ok, so let's see if I can end this right now.

1) A depiction of a former leader with an indication of a former political party is not racist. Period. There is no good faith basis to believe that his intention with it was racist, and there was, from what is described here, no propoganda indicated on the poster as to the actions performed by said party which were racist and genocidal.

2) That aside, it was in poor taste, and was obviously inflammatory and harassment of other SL players.

The reasons were wrong, but the ruling was right.

Do NOT discriminate on people based upon their political views, or what they choose to stud. Do not say they are racist for a depiction of Hitler with a Nazi party emblem.

There are many famous historians who study Hitler extensively, they could be said to 'love' him even. He is a historical figure, and the Nazi party of the time was a historical entity. They exist. Do not tag all inferences made of them to be the product of racism. It's simply not the case.

It's this kind of shortsightedness that leads the world to the brittle edge of racial acceptance that it is in today. Do your part, and don't proliferate this. You have no reason to.

"Do NOT discriminate on people based upon their political views, or what they choose to stud. Do not say they are racist for a depiction of Hitler with a Nazi party emblem."


Ok forgive me if I have maybe misunderstood this comment but would it be something like this example?

Do not think I am racist because I have depictions of cross burnings on people's lawns? Do no discriminate against me because I believe the political views of the KKK saying whites are the supreme and only real race is ok?

Again these are examples, not my actual views of life. I am trying hard to understand this thinking that I'm seeing thrown around in this thread.

I understand the historical value of the issue but who really online these days puts a picture of hitler up for histories sake? Its about as cute as the people who made "DC Sniper" screen names on various chat rooms during that whole event as it was taking place. In the end, wether it was political or free speech, its simply boiled down to very poor taste by the general whole of the population. Majority view or something like that.

I remember an animated film was released a few years back, wish I could remember its name. It had a swashtica (sp?) in it and it upset a lot of people because they saw that as the racist symbol from WWII. What they DIDNT know was it was the opposite of the Nazi symbol. The one in the movie was the symbol of life, not the swashtica depicted in the history of the Nazi's. Theirs being the symbol of death I believe. This is purely off the top of my head so please don't bite it off. I need it to think and find out the facts on that. LoL.

I don't think that quite qualifies as a 'political view'.

As far as the cross burning. If someone had a poster of a cross burning on a lawn, and you declared them a racist, damned them, condemned them, and ruined their life.

Then you found out they were a photographer, and it was a photo that they had taken, but had no racist beliefs behind it.

It sounds to me like people are irate at seeing a picture of Hitler period, without bothering to find out what it's purpose was.

If you go to the Museum of Tolerance and they have a picture of Hitler, is that racist? When they did the "Soup Nazi" episode on Seinfeld, was calling that guy the soup nazi racist? Against whom? Jews? Arabs (since the guy was an Arab)? Come ON, people. THINK about it ALL THE WAY THROUGH.

FuelTanker's intent was not to praise Hitler, but to insult the PeaceKeepers.

As far as the bad taste argument goes, taste is subjective. If I put up a picture of Lenin or Stalin or Moussolini or Chairman Mao, I can practically guarantee that NO ONE WOULD EVER GIVE A $#17.

I admit that much of the over dramatization of this bit of pouting has confused me, but let me be clear. I have more than three brain cells to mush together. I KNOW what the purpose of those posters was.

I am not fooled by all this caterwauling that there are bigger issues here. The boy meant to piss people off. He chose an image that gave him confidence toward that goal. He succeeded in pissing people off. Ta da. 1, 2, 3. A, B, C. Now, he is upset to find out that there is a D, a 4, there are consequences. Perhaps someone should have explained that to him earlier, but it ain't my job.

So, if you go out of your way to insult someone, and then they respond angrily, don't moan about being misunderstood.

Look, if you want to know what's being manufactured in a factory, simply check what comes out on the loading dock. You can tell me all sorts of fancy things were going through the boy's head, but I see what's getting loaded on the trucks. He got what he wanted when he put the signs up: pissed off people. Now he has to cope with that.

I'll put my 2 cents in.

One thing people in defense of the use of Hilter's image are ignoring is that the picture of Hilter is an extremely powerful and well understood icon of hatred in this and many other cultures. There's no denying it. Ask anyone with a 4th grade education. You can carefully use the image to educate and learn from, but that's about the exent of it.

Wrecklessly using this symbol (picture of Hitler) on a sign that advocates protest, anger or hate will essentially endorse ALL that the icon represents, obscuring any message that may have been intended. It isn't not just giving someone the bird or telling them to stick odd things in odd places, you're trivializing the travesty that created the icon in this shallow comparison. By making the symbol seem trivial it would seem to promote the icon's message. Hate.

You might as well come to my yard and burn a cross to keep warm. "Its no big deal, I was just buring some old wood." Youre intent may not have have been to tick me off, but I'm still going to hit you with my baseball bat for your irreverence of what that symbol means. Luckily, the Lindens have far greater patience than me.

If you're at all socially adept you should understand this. And as this is a social interaction game, you should be able to learn it quickly.

There were three burning crosses in Darkwood for better than a week and nobody said a word about it. I know the person was working on something not in any racist theme, and that they are not from the South, and therefore probably has no concept of what burning crosses generally mean in the South to African-Americans, Jews and Catholics, but I was still a little surprised to see them without any resulting controversy.

My 2 cents...
In my opinion the same view can be taken from a picture of Stalin, Castro, Bin Laden, Hussein, heck or even George W. Bush. Many of us can find different images to be offensive. I could find offensive a picture of Christopher Columbus since he came into Puerto Rico along with many Spaniards, enslaved all the "Tainos", raped their women, when they were done with them (the indians had started to die) they brought in Africans and did the same to them. This is part of history. And while I do find it repulsive, it reminds me of what happened. Others shouldn't forget either, since the emotions that it fuels can prevent it from happening again.

I guess it all depends on the message behind the imagery and what the person was tring to express with it.

P.S. If the owner of the giant Georgie head, the same one who uses it in a particle script in his AV, is reading this... can you please tell me what is the message that you are trying to get through?

I would like to quietly and politely state my disgust at anyone who would like to go through his or her entire life in a sanitized fantasy world where nothing can be deemed offensive to anyone.
Dealing with things that bother you, shock you or make you sad is part of growing up. If you cannot cope with these situations, you are emotionally immature and unprepared for life in the real world. Which tells us a lot about the people who pushed for these laws and those who passed them.
I can't see anything wrong with a picture of Hitler, I wholeheartedly encourage anyone who admires the man and sympathizes with his political views to outright state it.
Firstly because it's called freedom of speech and it used to be what made America great, until the US government decided to rip the constitution into pieces during the last couple of decades, and start taking away most of your rights.
Secondly because letting people like the neonazis do everything out in the open gives them a false sense of security and allows us to easily monitor them
Repression achieves nothing. Take it from someone whose country was under a fascist dictatorship from 1926 to 1974 - if people had been allowed to express their anger outloud, we would probably never have had a revolution

I completely agree with this point. People should be offended by imagery which their culture deems villainous. And they are. But that's beside the crux of the issue.

The issue is, is the image of Hitler a statement of hate? From my stand point with in my society, it would seem that Hitler is a very identifiable infamous icon of that subject. In the same way the Statue of Liberty stands for American freedom and pride. It doesn't matter that the green lady is French, the symbol ignores that. Its a cultural thing. It could be right or wrong, I don't know, but my point is, denying the iconification of Hitler as a symbol of hatred in this society is ignorant. Pictures of Hitler without careful context are thus a violation of the EULA.

I'm glad that we've demonstrated that our society is guilty until proven innocent, and not the other way around.

People need to get over themselves, and realize that if they see something they don't like, they need to stop looking.

This is the sort of ideology which is leading our society down the path that was wonderfully illustrated in Fahrenheit 451.

Everything offends someone, and as such, eventually nothing will be viable to exist. Everything will be offensive, everything will be illegal. Our alphabet will become a symbol of hate because it contains the letters to make up the word 'nazi'.

So what next, we outlaw the german language, as the Nazi party and Hitler spoke it? Perhaps we decide that anyone who is Austrian born is a hatemonger? Where is the line drawn?

This isn't a religion, people. Don't blindly follow.

<sigh>

In case I misunderstood some of the points you've glancingly stabbed at here, I apologize. But, as I explained earlier, it' not MY responsibility to read your mind. So, I'll respond to what I think you're saying.

First, Mr Fueltanker is not on trial. While he may be entitled to the presumption of innocence in the American court system, he is NOT entitled to that presumption when I am standing in front of a bank of Hitler posters all labeled as being owned by him.


What he did was make a connective depiction showing Hitler - an icon for many things, none of which are positive - with the name of a group of players. I am tired of hearing all sorts of explanations, justifications, prevarications, declarations, and clarifications. He paired Hitler with a group of players, and left it at that. Therefore, they have every right to conclude any meaning from that depiction that they care to conclude, and to be as livid as they like. If this shocks and hurts him, then he needs to seek counseling, which I assume will recommend he stay away from future public conversations.

If he meant something positive from this, he did a real poor job of communicating that - though explaining the positive aspects of being compared to Hitler IS a very difficult job at best, and he did not choose the best circumstances to attempt it.

So, yeah. He is guilty of acting poorly. If it ever comes to court, I will - of course - expect the court and the press to say "allegedly", but I - as a witness - do not have to do that. Instead, I am required to tell what I have seen, and I have seen that Mr Fueltanker is guilty.






An interesting pairing of concepts here. First, I would say that I agree with you at first glance. I'm very fond of the difference between my kind of folks - who resolutely try to keep their noses out of other folks' private lives - and the more conservative approach of keeping tabs on who does what with who and why. On the other hand, I am compelled to speak up when people's PUBLIC behavior gets out of line. If all of us kept our mouths shut in the face of speech we consider dangerous, then we DO head down the path toward fascism.






Once more for those who weren't listening earlier: I am not suggesting that anyone be forced to stop saying offensive things. I'm just saying that IF you choose to be offensive, do NOT whine when people are offended. Is that a big logical leap????

Yes, we have rights in America. But only a very bad teacher would have educated you to think that exercising your right to free speech somehow guarantees you a pleasant smile from everyone you speak to. All those rights guarantee is that you will not be sentenced to federal prison for what you said. And that the GOVERNMENT will not be allowed to make laws that keep you from speaking. That's ALL the Constitution promises. It says it WON'T become illegal to call me a Nazi.

It has nothing at all to do with telling me that I can't be pissed off - publicly and vocally - if you stick a Hitler sticker on my forehead. The Constitution promises me that it won't be illegal for me to call you a fascist for calling me a Nazi. And so on. Nothing has been declared illegal here. I've simply declared your friend's poster as Stupid. Not quite the same thing.

The line is drawn at my feet. Stop calling me a Nazi and I'll stop getting pissed off. Simple enough?






I have no response to this "point." Not because I don't feel it's not important, but because it doesn't make any sense. How can someone who told me to simply "stop looking" then go on to warn me about following blindly?

Whatever.

My own final point: I would suggest that anyone trying to help Mr Fueltanker spread his smokescreen, just take a break and let this pass. As I said before, I'm sick of people who can't handle the consequences of exercising their right to speak. No one - not even the Constitution - ever said that they get to say whatever they want to whomever they want without any fear of consequence. So, if you call me a Nazi, I will tell you to shut up. And if you don't, I will attempt to MAKE you shut up. The Constitution says I can't lock you up for talking, but other laws certainly allow me to sue your undershorts off.

Kathy is my new SL hero!!

I wish I could write out my ideas a quarter as well.

woot!

My point in posting the nuts & bolts of what happened last time was exactly this, although it didnt really convey. Kathy has a much better gift for words than I.

Free speech has its responsibilities.

You cannot expect to say whatever you want to and go unchallenged. If you decide to put your views out there and are passionate in your message, expect the response to be twice as passionate.