Is it legal to gather information in SL.

Seems like this may have started on another thread--but I didn't see that. If this person is gathering statistics, it doesn't seem like they plan to present a list of names--rather count the number of people banned, the number of people banned from multiple parcels, the number of parcels with no bans, etc.

Am I missing something? Did they ever say they plan to report a list of banned avatars? All I saw is that this is a student research project, not an SL version of McCarthyism--right?

I personally don't care if someone reads my ban list, but it seems rather nosy to me.

To Tana: You catch more flies with honey than vinegar. I think a few people might be a little off-put by your abrasiveness here... Just sayin'.

Gee, thanks so much for being open and forthcoming about your sources, motives and methods, Tana.

I was on your side in the first thread, but this sort of guarded response only leads me to believe that you are Up To No Good. I think I'd better add you to my parcel's ban list, just to be safe.

[EDIT: I see it's for a "sociology study". Sorry, insufficient reason. For one thing, there have been too many "students doing studies" on here asking for personal information, and it's a certainty that not all of them were actually legitimate students. For another, your premises appear flawed (an SL to RL comparison), although you've actually provided very little information so far. There are some serious social observers here, Tana...if you'd let us know exactly what it is you hope to achieve, and provide some checkable bona fides, I bet you'd find a lot of help in focusing your research.

If not...well, nosey researchers and "survey data collectors" get a quick brushoff from me, and from a lot of other SL denizens. Privacy, you know.]

then this thread deserves to be closed.
if you are being evasion regarding your reasoning as to why you need this "info" i see no reason anyone else, unless they choose to, should bother to respond anymore.

in short, your refusal to answer a simple question leads me, personally to believe you are planning to doing something illegal, or at the very least, unethical, with those names.

It may be controversial but I don't see any reason to think it is illegal. To be illegal there has to be a law specifically prohibiting it. There is probably no law prohibiting the gathering of the information, as it is readably available to anyone with an SL account. How you use the information could be illegal if it crosses the line to become libel or slander.

I dont see how banning avatars from your land in SL can in any way equate with anything in RL...but good luck with this.
Maybe you could post a thesis statement and then people could see exactly what information you need and would be better able to help you.

That seemed like a pretty complete explanation to me, I can imagine all sorts of interesting conclusions could be drawn from a sociological perspective.

it was her evasiveness(sp) that got my dander up. most college kids when doing some sort of data gathering in SL are very up front about what they need, and what they need it for. she wasn't and seemed hostile when Raud asked her why and for what purpose.

only two types of people respond that way; reporters and lawyers.

/me adds Tana to her ban list.

That's apples and oranges. Any ratio would tell absolutely nothing.

especially considering the number of people banned from various plots for personal disputes and biases and such, as well as the fact you can only ban up to 300 people at once.

Agreed. I'm very puzzled as to how these two things relate, and how in the world ban lists relate to RL? Maybe Tana could come check my banlist on my RL house?

This might help (from the ToS):

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 without their consent, 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;

So.... using a bot to scan data would be "surreptiously intercept.... data"

If the Original Poster wants to gather the data legally, then the OP will have to ask permission from every parcel owner and sim owner for that information, manually, one at a time (you would not want to spam now would you?).

I don't know if they still do, but in the past LL has always insisted that any persons wishing to use SL for educational purposes identify themselves to LL and get approval. Have you done so?

Also, I second what someone said above - run this by your ethics committee.

You may also want to run it by your adviser, because frankly I don't see how you can obtain sufficient data from a snapshot of banlists to obtain any useful data, but since you refuse to share any details of your project, I can't comment further there.

Twarn't me asking the why. I was asking the HOW. Arua Rotaru was the one asking why, which is why I didn't ask it.

Although come to think of it, she was pretty hostile and evasive either way. I'm not likely to help the girl myself because of that. Good grief, if she's going into sociology, she needs to learn how to handle people who are going to ask questions.

I wasn't asking for the code of the program, just mostly whether or not there's a bot involved. Last thing we need is another reason for the search to go fubar on us.. oh, wait...

The OP's OP in the thread that triggered this one ended with the paragraph:
"For all of those who need to know the purpose of such a program. It is simply to find a ratio of banned vs average number of online people. Not all people banned from a property is a griefer or troublemaker. There are many reasons persons are banned by property owners. The information gathered is for personal research and will not be shared or posted."

I'm convinced that many people post in these forums without actually reading through the thread. They just jump in at random starting at some posting that's pushed their buttons. A thread becomes a form of Chinese whisper, in which an OP is attacked not for what they said, but for someone else's misinterpretation and build of what they said.


The OP's intention as initially clearly stated seems harmless to me.

How we got from that to a witchhunt is 'fascinating'.

Very muddy. What will this tell you? Many of the banned are probably not active accounts. Also, the online figures include bots, so that number is suspect, too. What RL situation is the equivalent of being on a ban list in SL? Criminals? Telemarketers? People who other people just dislike on general principles?

I'm not criticizing, just curious.

Just to throw a minor wrench in your data collection:

Some 3rd party tools are setup to work around the '300 avatar parcel limit' by maintaining their own internal banlist outside of the parcel list. This means that if you did make a bot to go collect every visible parcel list, you *still* wouldn't have an all-inclusive list of all bans. Additionally, Estate owners can ban using their estate tools - which, if I'm not mistaken - are also not public in-world visible.

So, questions of ethics aside - I'm not sure if its going to be possible to collect the all-inclusive data you're seeking in the first place.

In the UK we have Anti-Social Behaviour Orders, which are used by the police and local government to ban individuals from certain areas, in some cases without them having been convicted of a crime. Very similar to SL bans in some ways.

what your allowed to have it what you can easily see or what someone voluntarily gives you if you ask and nothing more


therefore if you have the profile info of the person they wrote its fine however if your talking about having found some hole in LL's database to access real world info I would be reporting it really fast as in picking up the phone.

Can you collect info? If you go up to a guy and say can you give me this info and he says okay and give it to you then its okay. What you can't do is get it through illegal means.

No LL wont be giving it to you anytime soon
If your using the AVS site it would be to your benefit to inform LL of this ability you seem to have somehow gained and stop doing it because you probably will get yourself in a lot of trouble

this is what you can have from me or anyone else just hanging around in sl or posting on this board. My avatar name and what is contained on my profile. If your finding ways of obtaining my real world name and any information attached to it without my consent and I find out I will be more then just a bit miffed and worried and be probably going to my local rcmp and seeing what I can do to stop this information leak because it means your doing it to everyone and not just me.

You can't hack
You can't steal it
You can ask for it from the avatar that's it
If he refuses to give it to you then that is where it ends

Your banlist is as publicly available as anything you put in your profile, Wilhelm.

As I recall, that was for people who wanted to do surverys. As in, "Hey, please come to my page and fill out this short questionaire for my school research project." Not so much for people simply scanning land properties.



The ethics committe will be no doubt totally clueless about Second Life. It will be "oh, you want to automatically consolidate information that's publicly accessible. Sure, sounds good to us."

--Hugsy

I don't really see it as a witchhunt. The OP clearly states after having said(asked) her piece, "the discussion is now open". So people are now discussing.... it IS a forum, no? It's also fun. Maybe her actual "sociological" project is on human behaviour in a forum discussion, lol

I'm betting she gets an A

I'm guessing that if you are really doing this for study purposes you're an undergrad student then, since proper research projects that involve investigating other people generally require one to submit one's research proposal to an ethics committee who consider ethical issues pretty thoroughly before giving the project either a red or green light. The fact that you say you're doing this for a research project but are unwilling to discuss it in detail is a HUGE red light; reputable researchers are *required* to spell out the details of what the project involves and how the data will be used to subjects as part of an Informed Consent process, *before* the research subjects agree to participate.

You can't expect folk to be happy for you to go digging around in their personal data if you're not prepared to be forthcoming about why you're doing it and what *exactly* you're going to do with the information if you collect it. It's not merely a matter of "is it legal or not?" To imagine that's the only inssue of importance is naive.

A research project would also not attempt to survey an entire global population. If this is truley a research project then--by all means--pick a reasonable sample. You could select 10 sims, mixing mainland and estate, and pount the pavement to interview residents about out how many people live on a parcel and how many are banned. You don't need to know the total number of banned residents and the total population. It's so different from RL because in RL we don't have multiple accounts, inactive residents, etc.