"reasonable expectation of privacy"

exactly how can there be a "reasonable expectation of privacy" if voice chat is conversed in the general public ?

i have the ability to connect to Vivox's servers in order to listen to general public voice chat in a particular sim with or without having to be logged into SL and to rebroadcast this chat remotely through my own server.

if i feel i want to play it on a loudspeaker outside the front of my house, play it over a chatline on the telephone or broadcast it over the CB radio, that is my business.

Vivox does not have TOS regarding their voice service provided to SL concerning the public audio media content generated by residents speaking in public voice chat within SL, what you can and cannot do with this voice chat, and unless there is a provision in Vivox's TOS that says specifically otherwise, there is nothing wrong being done here.

the general public voice chat provided as a service from Vivox is not "copyrighted" in any way as to restrict its use in another application.

SL general public voice chat is NOT content that belongs to SL, it is generated by a service provided to SL from Vivox.

there are other means and ways to converse privately, anyone with half a brain should know if you speak voice in public, you can be heard by anyone.

Who said there was supposed to be such an expectation on voice chat in SL?

How do you connect to the SL Vivox stream without being logged into SL?

There might be some laws somewhere about recording converstations without permission, rebroadcasting, and such.

I get the impression someone got an abuse report notice, or had an unpleasant interaction with someone that didn't appreciate having their voice chat recorded or transmitted elsewhere.

/me is curious about what events led up to this thread...

...besides the fact it's Friday.

perhaps.
some people in the public dont like video cameras, so they avoid them.
some people dont like to talk in public, so they go to a private place to talk.
why should talking in public voice in SL be any different than real life ?
yes there was an "unpleasant interaction" with a "Linden" on this issue, but it was resolved in the end and i am continuing to do as i wish, as i have stated my case after much research into the issue way before hand and provided the facts.

a "Linden" i wont name here.

events that your account should be "banned" as a result of these actions without a reasonable explanation as to why and without the facts presented for a reason.
(the account ban was lifted after i provided my facts)

connecting to the Vivox server without having to log onto SL is a bit too complicated to explain here.
but rebroadcasting general public voice chat is much easier to explain.
if you can run windows media encoder and shoutcast with winamp, you can do it too.

/me offers Elite a Linden bear to dismantle to help him calming down.

Well, "reasonable expectation of privacy" is something which does not describe SL very well, with or without voice, now does it?

the first day i joined SL, i didnt expect a "reasonable expectation of privacy".
i even knew better that general voice was public among other agents within a 50 meter radius.

basically, i am remotely monitoring general public voice chat in a specific sim through windows media encoder for the purpose of me and my friends to be able to listen to it from outside of SL, no different than logging onto a text only viewer to chat text only, with the exception that there currently is no program available that can perform this wanted task without having to install a bloated viewer to do it, even "SLIM" cannot do this wanted task as not every agent is on the same page as "SLIM", only agents on "SLIM" can be heard.
when i finish compiling my own program to connect to Vivox voice in a "lightweight" manner such as text only clients for text chatting, ill be sure to notify those interested in it.

You know, I'm kinda curious. Not that I expect you to answer this straightforwardly; but just to get the words out of my brain, why exactly are you connecting with Vivox's servers and rebroadcasting SL voice chat on your own server? I mean, it just doesn't seem to me to be the kinda thing someone does when they're bored and there's nothing good in the fridge...

its not a matter of being bored.
its a matter of wanting to listen to those unique public conversations that take place in this particular sim without:
a) having to be there
b) having to be logged on
additionally, its convenient to be able to open windows media player or winamp or even put the URL for the stream onto my sim and listen to it while performing tasks such as building or scripting.

"Tomorrow, I'm flying to New York."

"Flying to New York? What for?"

"Because driving would take too long."

OK yes, it's kind of a safe assumption that you're tapping the feed because you want to listen to it. That may have been the "letter" of what I asked, but it wasn't exactly the "spirit".

From the community standards:
Remotely monitoring conversations, posting conversation logs, or sharing conversation logs without consent are all prohibited in Second Life and on the Second Life Forums.

So.. what you are doing appears to be against the community standards. I suppose by not loging into SL you could be bypassing these standards but it is certainly against the intent of the standards.

Of course, if you got permission from the people you are remotely monitoring it would be fine. Are they likely to give permission?

No one likes to be listened to without their knowledge, even for the most innocent conversations. Just for the sake of good manners you should seek permission first.

spy?

I would hope that a thinking Linden would realize that anyone that speaks on an estate channel is forfeiting any right to reasonable expectations of privacy. I mean, if Elite was in the same sim and happened to hear because they yammered on the estate channel (and voice carries a good distance) it wouldn't be much different. I would be more concerned if he was listening onto parcels using private channels.

Sounds creepy to me.

I see no problem at all really with obtaining and listening to public voice chat streams. It's not rocket science or sooper hacking here. Just download a freebie connection manager that tells you the IP and port numbers of what internet addresses your're connected to and go to a busy voice area and look at it. Copy down the right one and put it in your "connect to" box.. wow. It's the same as getting your favorite clubs hidden stream address so you can listen at home or outside SL. ViVox's outgoing compilation is no different. I think doing anything outside of merely listening in though raises some privacy concerns for the individuals IN that voice chat. Any kind of rebroadcast or record of peoples conversations usually requires written permission by those involved, or a court order. I don't think arguing on a "different medium" stance would actually save you from getting the shaft if you made sessions of that available and someone involved gets pissed and sues. It's technically no different than recording a public conversation through a parabolic microphone when your presence isn't known, and there's laws that cover that sorta thing.

/me is glad she doesn't use voice.

Yawn. Another "I'm doing something questionable that people are telling me is wrong, so please tell me I'm right" thread.

Indeed. It seems odd to me that if he was banned and the ban was already reversed by the Lindens because he successfully argued for his reinstatement, as he claims, that he should be here still asking other people for validation. Most people who start a "the Lindens are meanies" thread are trapped in the midst of a punitive somethingorother; this guy seems to have already won so I'm not sure what the point of the question is.

This thread is also unique because most people who feel they've been wronged by LL go out of their way to post as much information as possible because they feel if people knew all that had gone on, the people would understand their side and be sympathetic; this fellow, on the other hand, seems to be asking us to make a judgment based on the smallest possible amount of information he can provide. He wants a strict letter-of-the-law interpretation and no other details are important. It's not proof, of course, but in my experience people who employ such a strategy are doing so because they know or suspect that all those other "unimportant" details could easily lose sympathy points for him for some reason.

There's all kinds of interesting questions here. For instance, if he was banned by LL for this, that means somebody who was being recorded found out about it and complained; possibly more than one person. This, and the OP's very first sentence stressing the lack of a legal expectation of privacy in SL and such, is highly suggestive that EliteData has already been asked to stop what he's doing by the people he's listening to, and he has refused to do so. That loses sympathy points, yeah.

But a more interesting question is how those people found out in the first place. It's not like anybody within SL would be able to tell someone outside SL has tapped into their voice stream. So how could they know he was listening? The answer probably lies in the OP as well, where he says



So, apparently he's not just "listening" for his own reasons; he's taking the stream, turning it around, and rebroadcasting it on a non-Vivox channel for other people to listen to as well. Which leads to yet another question.

Why? If EliteData owned the sim in question and wanted to monitor it while he wasn't around, that would be like a weird compulsive thing but it's at least believable. But not only is it not his sim, he's rebroadcasting the stream for other people to listen to so we know that the whole "administrative" excuse doesn't apply here. I find this curious - why on earth would somebody want to do what he's doing? He describes "unique conversations that take place in this particular sim", and that gives me a few ideas, but none of them are particularly flattering. I also tend to wonder what being permitted to listen to his rebroadcast entails, beyond having a media player of course.

No one likes to be listened to without their knowledge, even for the most innocent conversations. Just for the sake of good manners you should seek permission first.[/QUOTE]
Then why talk in general voice chat if you do not want everybody to hear? If I was a person that didn't want ppl to hear my conversation, I would definatly use private or conference calls. If you talk to general voice you have no clue who is listening.

You can use voice and all without logging into SL but your voice account name is tied to your avatar name, unless I'm mistaken there's no way to listen to voice without your name showing up in the "active speakers" list

Because the fact that on SL you can't hear people on voice when they're a certain distance away from you fools people into believing that the conversation IS private if there's nobody else but the conversants in chatting range. That somebody can tap into the voice feed of an entire sim with no distance restrictions, or indeed even without being logged into Second Life at all, is NOT intuitive to the majority of people. I don't really use voice, but I certainly didn't think it was possible.

Besides, private voice conversations obviously aren't private after all. Obviously somebody tapping the conversation from outside SL is going to be able to pick and choose voice streams, even private ones, because it's SL that decides who hears and cannot hear this or that voice feed, and tapping into Vivox end-runs around any of those restrictions.

It's a security exploit, of a kind. Perhaps it deserves a JIRA.

Actually, this would fall more into the area of not expecting to be overhead by anyone else when only you and the other person is there. That is why it is illegal to put wireless mics in places - it allows someone to listen without anyone knowing there is a listener.

If you are in a group of people, you have made the choice to talk about what you are talking about, knowing that someone may over hear. If you go someplace where it is just the people you see, then you have the reasonable expectation of privacy that only the people you see will hear you.

What you are doing is wiretapping, and it shall be presented to LL in that fashion.