SL Resident Blacklists

No
Please cite the California law on Slander.

I know you love me 2k, but since I found out you were a guy.........I really am not in to hot man sex.

well, just because an av runs a successful in-world business that doesnt mean that they are incapable of harassment or other antisocial behaviour.
i could easily name a dozen high profile people that are not a pleasure to interact with.

Chris! You're a three time winner...congratulations!

And glory be, I made the list too!

Uh...what is a "gray list", anyway?

I have to agree somewhat with Atom in that you can be prosecuted for slander. However, slander is very hard to prosecute, especially when the victim is a public figure. You also have to prove not only that the statements are untrue, they have to be very extreme in nature and you have to show that these statements have caused financial damage. It rarely happens that people are criminally prosecuted for slander. What generally happens is that you are sued for slander and emotional distress. The success of such cases really depend on how good the lawyers are (and the judge), since it is so hard to prove. But then if the victim is a huge multinational corporation with lots of money and resources, you have very little recourse. There are actually a bunch of cases involving McDonald's going after regular individuals who criticize their policies and practices (even if those allegations are true). ***read The Fast Food Nation for more info about that****

Now, in terms of being prosecuted in other countries, that is a little harder. If you are prosecuted outside the country you live in, then the country you live in has to grant extradition to that country or prosecute in behalf of that country. And often that is hard to do. For example, a famous Hollywood actor (can't remember his name right now) was charged with some huge crime in India because he kissed a Bollywood star at an awards show. Now, even though he was charged and convicted of this crime in India, he is not sitting in jail right now, because the US isn't going to extradite him and the only way for them to put him in jail would be if he ever entered India again (which he won't).

I just wanted to add my two cents. Sorry about being so all over the place. I see both arguments, but I think that generally slander is hard to prosecute. That doesn't mean I think you shouldn't be careful though about what you say though.

I started a similar site called scumofsl.com... It was a place for people to vent on how they got screwed over and by who and also point out scams and less the honorable business practices... I have killed the site though.

I still think the concept is sound however the main problem is the ability to create as many alts as you want in SL... So in the end even if the site put an end to an avatars scam all they had to do was create another avatar and run the scam all over again... Seeing how the majority of SL users don't read websites about SL it really made little sense to keep spending money on the site...

Another issue, being the anonymity of everyone the site itself could be gamed. All someone has to do it get on a proxy server and register with any number of thousands of IP addresses and either screw someone over or defend themselfs...

In the end it really was pointless.

they really are useless because unless you have access to actual server logs of events where both user making the claim and defendant or defendants cannot access then there is no way to tell who is really telling the truth..

An example
i've had a spybot used on me and a couple other people that were with me in a meeting..
it's log from the bot had been posted into a huge group as a groups notice attachment notecard with a long sob story of lies to really make it thick and sent out to a guest book of over 30,000 people for all to see after it was edited to twist in the favor of the one sending the notice..
the only thing that had stopped a huge amount of public ridicule and problems for us was the person had a history of using these bots and had been caught the next day and the day after doing the same thing to others.. there is nothing we could say or do in our defense because logs from users are no proof at all..you just have to hope truth will come out..in this case the person hung them self..
we were fortunate..In most cases people are not as fortunate.

there is no real way to prove this without actual true logs from one source..which would be from the server itself untouched by any of the people involved..
so just as in rl..anyone can accuse anyone but without proof it is a matter of belief..
without both sides of the story one side will get a landslide of believers in it's favor..

I put no merit in a system like one of these black lists that can be easily gamed with my word against yours and not an ounce of usable proof..

Mcarthy used a blacklist..that should be more than enough reason why not too lol

Hehe - thanks, Gordon Frankly, I'm surprised we made it past 2 years without going down like a drama-filled zeppelin. Blacklists are extremely controversial, and tend to have an extremely short lifespan as a result.

BanLink has been mostly impervious to drama, because Mera & I take a completely hands-off, non-interference approach with the banlist. We consider ourselves nothing more than custodians of the technical system, with the contents of the database belonging to the subscribers.

People can log bans for whatever reasons they wish, and folks can log disputes with whatever insulting, infuriating text they wish - and its between them. As long as people stick to talking about avatars, and not RL information, we allow the trust system to work its magic.

When certain people inevitably abuse the system, we take solace in the fact that they're doing so at their own peril. Folks who log abusive bans can find every ban they've ever issued 'untrusted' by a subscriber's single mouseclick - and likewise, abusive disputes accomplish nothing other than justifying the original ban to others.



Hi Jeff!! Long time no see!

I definately agree that there's a lot of similarities between RBL/DNSBL and BanLink - both in functionality, and in pitfalls & criticisms.



When talking about blacklists in general, you're mostly right. But I disagree that this distinction applies to BanLink, for the following reason:

BanLink doesn't shift control over to a 3rd party. The system is intentionally decentralized such that subscribers have full control over what makes it onto their custom-generated banlists. The foundation of this 'trust' system, is assumption that subscribers want their bans to be as widely trusted as possible. In order to acheive this, people have to be nearly universally considered honorable about their ban policies. Few acheive this, but those that do indeed enjoy powerful bans as an incentive for being trustworthy.

This all creates an environment where each ban entered into the system is scrutinized by all the other venues that trust the issuing location, instead of some central third-party committe that can abuse their power. Widely trusted bans receive lots of scrutiny, while narrowly-trusted bans recieve less scrutiny.... until the venue's trust count reaches 0, in which case there's no need to scrutinize at all

Yep. They finally let me out of my cage.

"legal?" I'm no lawyer, but I would dare speculate 99% of lawyers couldn't even answer this question. This requires a highly specialized understanding of areas of the law which are ridiculously antiquated and ambiguous.

In general blacklists can be either legal or illegal. It depends all on the details of what it contains and how it's used. Libel is libel period, and actually has little to do with blacklists. There are plenty of other legal snags to blacklists too. Anyone can keep a private list of anything they like. Stores routinely keep a "No Checks" list of people who have bounced prior. Publishing that info crosses one of those thin fuzzy grey lines: privacy. Even if a blacklist has sufficient proof to legally publish, *using* it can cross another line: discrimination. Taking action against someone (or denying it) based on someone else's say-so is typically not legal.

Then add upon that shaky foundation, the digital age. It is anybody's guess how "the law" might treat SL from day to day. Is the example blacklist merely a bunch of *fictional characters*? How can you slander/libel pixels and data??? So one would also have to legally prove the SL-RL identity thing, and RL monetary loss. And whether or not "California Law" does or does not apply to grid residents. "Precedent" if there is one, is that the TOS *is* the "law" within company property (aka the servers). But then there's the 3rd party website hurdle. As not to point fingers in any specific direction, I'm just asking rhetorically: what country/state does the hypothetical blacklist site physically reside in? Laws backed by carbonspace borders do not translate well to lands of ones and zeros.

Yuck! Bottom line is there really isn't a precedent for stuff this kinda complex cause no one has fully taken it to task in a court of law. And like alot of things, the burden falls on the victim who frequently doesn't have the resources. Just cause no one has proven it illegal yet, does not prove the legality of it. I don't think the OP question *can* be answered at this time.

BOO!
---- unrelated to the dog's post ----

i really dont like blacklists, but you can bet i have my own shared tween real life friends

and considering its just me and a handful of others you would be surprised at the size of the list we have collected from various events from clubs to mall booths within the past 8 months

we dont use it as a hard "your not allowed" thing but if someone starts acting a fool its nice to be able to go back and see if they have made the list before, and that greatly empowers us to make a informed decision about our actions

Before citing lots of legal positions on slander, please remember that written word is called libel. That may vary some of the statements from a legal point of view.


Vampareus is really a half-horse, half- human freak of nature that was given birth by Rosanne Arnold. See, that is libel. Well, unless it is true. Then I am ARable for outing real life info.

*jumps back out*

I couldn't resist juxtaposing these two lines together.

There's a tiny bit of precedent for internet-related cases. Without taking more than ten seconds to think of great sources for your reading pleasure, off the top of my head I'd recommend starting off with the EFF website. www.eff.org

while we're discussing vaporlaw and libel, how about editable quotes.
thanx for the link, that's exactly what I mean. The "frontier" is mostly being pushed by fat-cats who can't let three notes slip by unless they get rich on it. The law is lightyears behind "virtual-world e-commerce slander".

It's late. I read that as "edible quotes."

gotta find that "sleep" pose.

Hey, what do you have against grey people

/me mutters something about everyone being biased against the grey people

I have to say that I am a little wary of blacklists as it can easily turn into personal vendettas against other people. However, having said that, if there is a respectable site that makes sure to keep those kinds of things in balance, then I think there's nothing wrong with that.

Also, calling someone a bad name does not necessarily constitute libel. People in the media publicly call each other names all the time, yet it is not considered libel. In order for something to be considered as libel, it has to have a significant financial impact on the person receiving said insult. So saying, "Jon Stewart is a douchebag," might be considered offensive but is not libel. However, saying "Jon Stewart engaged in a money laundering operation which stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from starving children," might be construed as libel (and even then it might not be considered as such).

-Persephone Vlodovic

P.S. For the record, I do not think Jon Stewart is a douchebag.