How does LL stop the "TMNT" attacks?

One bit of that article struck a chord:
"As one GoonFleet member's online profile declared, "You may be playing EVE Online, but be warned: We are playing Something Awful."

If someone else is playing a game (or life) against you by their own rules, your winning strategies probably do not involve
1) Playing by the usual rules
2) Playing by their rules


There is another line from the Wired article:
"It's only one element, he insists, in an arsenal of PN techniques designed to push users past the brink of moral outrage toward that rare moment — at once humiliating and enlightening — when they find themselves crying over a computer game. Getting that response is what it's all about, the Nigras say."

AND:
"Their work is complete when the victims log off in a huff."


How to spoil 'the game' for griefers?
The most common advice is to TP away or log out.

This gives griefers a partial victory, but at least it would be the least satisfying victory.
It looks like we'll never beat griefers at their own game.
The only people who can play with a set of rules that grief griefers are LL.

Until LL begin to quantify the costs of griefing, there is no way their beancounters are going to sanction effective RL action against griefers.
It is possible for people to escape the attentions of the Feds and courts as long as the complainant can not prove an actual financial loss exceeding tens of thousands of US$ (I forget the precise number).

This is referred to in the article:
Pressed as to the legality of their griefing, PNs are quick to cite the distinction made in Second Life's own terms of service between real money and the "fictional currency" that circulates in-game. As ^ban^ puts it, "This is our razor-thin disclaimer which protects us in real-life" from what /b/tards refer to as "a ride in the FBI party van."


Your World, Your Imagination?
I think that LL should use a bit of imagination to analyse the activities of griefers and begin to stick dollar bills on the costs of dealing with ARs, cleanups and region downtimes. Those costs are real. Costs due to lost or reduced revenue from users are less straightforward to 'prove' but there must be the potential for a plausible number.

do not ever take it seriously

I'm not aware of a current attack.

There's been dozens to hundreds of such attacks in past months.

Accounts can be created essentially at will.

It's my understanding that the folks using the Shooped Life clients can login in with a new account as fast as the old ones get banned.

Hey, what do you know, while I was typing this , an attack started. It's in

This one has the TMNT and the words "I AM A MEMBER OF THE PATRIOTIC NIGRAS, YOU LINDENS CAN....." That one.

http://i198.photobucket.com/albums/aa245/SuezanneC-Baskerville/Second%20Life/SecondLife-Chatandparticlegriefing.png

I know that the objects generating the textures can generally be found and abuse reports filed.

What keeps the troublemakers from just making new accounts and griefing endlessly?

OMG, Chip! What a bunch of winners! I just can't decide which of them I want to date first!

coco

(they don't mean to, there just there to have fun and mess with those that take Internet space ships far too seriously, however the effect is the same)

OK, and herein lies the logical flaw of those who grief in order to prevent others from "taking the Internet too seriously," and who therefore claim themselves not only superior, but actually to be performing a sort of societal service.

OK, and herein lies the logical flaw of those who grief in order to prevent others from "taking the Internet too seriously," and who therefore claim themselves not only superior, but actually to be performing a sort of societal service.

They aren't doing it to teach people not to "take the Internet too seriously," and - no one assigned them that job.

They are doing it because the Internet is the only place where they can get away with being (paper) hooligans.

Imagine a bowling alley filled with people. Now here come these guys, throwing bricks onto the lanes, turning the lights on and off, etc., claiming they are just preventing anyone from "taking bowling too seriously."

I imagine all the people who are bowling would get pretty peeved, not to mention the bowling alley owners.

And if some of the bowlers became frustrated enough to cry, these guys would laugh at them and say they were obviously "taking bowling too seriously."

Or transfer the scenario anywhere. To the movie theaters, to teach the patrons not to take their movies "too seriously." Or running rampant through a restaurant, upending tables and throwing food, to teach people not to take eating out "too seriously."

I'd like to see them try that. But these guys wouldn't do these things, because they ARE only paper hooligans, without even the balls of proper hooligans to do their crimes in the real world, where they would likely find their helpless little flabby cowardly selves tossed in the slammer, but only AFTER the bowling alley patrons got through with them.

This little meme they have going about "teaching people not to take the Internet too seriously" is simply a bit of nonsense that one of them thought up ages ago, and the rest thought sounded good.

coco