Griefing and lack of LL response

Hi,

I am in need of some advice or direction and hoping someone will be able to guide me.

After about 8 months of working with my business partner, I decided to break away from him due to his insane and paranoid beliefs, not to mention his foul mouth when he decided to call my RL family members some really unrepeatable choice words (for no reason might I add)...

anyway, I moved on...I moved the location of the store, set up everything and business has been flourishing. Yesterday I was informed that his spreading vicious lies about me and posting altered chat logs on various SL-resident blogs...then today I find that he has camping bots on his land and has changed the name of his land and added it to search with the same name as my store...in an effort to drive people away from my business.

Not only that, he has written false claims on his profile about who I am and the identities of some totally unrelated people. We have all been abuse reporting him for quite some time under the pretense of violating community standards-disclosure & harassment, but to no avail.

Seriously, what more can I do? this guy is a psychopath and has waaaay too much free time on his hands, that I am sure he will try every effort to discredit me and my hardwork.


Thanks

<3

Vanya

Sorry, should have read the background first.
Cali

how awful im sorry to hear about this

Yes the alt thing is a good idea...but it would SO bug me to do it. Cant believe nothings has been done about him if this is true

there are always 2 sides to a story, and until I know his side, I will not pass judgement either way

as for the situation, not much you can do other than maybe the alt idea

or just continue on and hope for the best

sadly SL probably will not get involved, *grey area for griefing claims*

Surprising LL does not remove that information, it is against TOS.

The best thing to do is to ignore it. If the question comes up or someone wants more information, just tell them that you handled the situation and not everyone is happy. Let the guy hang himself. For those that do not believe you, its their loss. It is important to not explain details. Take the high road.

Well my business has been around for quite some time, it has an established customer base, a blog, plus countless reviews of my items under that business name...creating an alt wouldnt do much good IMHO, I would tell people I am relocating and changing the name, and he would obviously find out. And even if I didnt do that, my clothing is kind of recognizable...

The name of my store is registered with the Second Life Brand center...im not sure if that does any good.

Seriously, what would stop someone from just naming their store "Armidi" or "Artilleri" or "Naughty" and setting up bot camps to drive traffic away as a form of griefing?

what is the second life brand center?

don't think I have heard of that

If true,

This would be a good example why some people have a business on one alt

and date online on another - and don't tell them about the business


Lot of crazies out there.

Please share where that can be found.

this guy you used to date doesn't sell hot tubs by chance?

hot tubs?

Well I used to sell hot tubs, I am not sure if he is selling my work now.

just type in the words... sevan....into search

he is the first one to pop up

This is a very familiar story, sad to say.

It almost seems as if the easiest thing to do is to create a new MAIN account and start from scratch with no visible connection to the old mess. You could liquidate the assets of the old account and transfer them to the new. But you would need to make all your merchandise over again to disguise the fact that you are the same person. And make the new av not too similar to the old. At least it would be a lot easier the second time around.

Another alternative is to follow this guy around and spread your own counter propaganda, put out fires he starts etc. Heck maybe even think of ways to make his second life not worth living.

Or you can just keep doing what you're doing as well as you can and hope it all blows over.

I wish I could thing of a better way to deal with the situation.

edited to add: The high road almost always seems to be the best way in the long run.

Anything that doesn't happen inside of SL, on the forums (or the site in general such as official blog comments) are outside of LL's reach unfortunately, you'll never be able to AR that since they have no way of verifying who posted it.

Changing the name of his land to your own also isn't something LL will do much about unless you have your store name trademarked.

This you can AR for as long as it's something negative or derogatory about you (or disclosing alts for instance).

If you grouped everything together into one AR then the profile bit may have gotten lost in the "and on blogs and..." so it's worth filing one again just about that if you haven't.

Also keep in mind that some simply thrive more on the attention and reaction they get from you than anything else. Filing an AR that is considered actionable may make things worse rather than better.

Well not only have I AR him daily about his profile content, but so have the other people he has mentioned....and LL has done nothing.

Make a sexeh alt then seduce him so he loses interest in you.

You know you're on to something there.

lol....yea i wish it was that easy.

Now I just went to the border of his land, since I am banned, and I see a huge sign there with this statement written by him claiming that I am involved in Content theft, which is absolutely not true...I am as much involved in content theft as he ever was....so I filed an AR on that, plus the dozen or so camping bots he has sitting on his land to drive up traffic.

If you contact the owner of each blog and explain the situation, many will likely remove the comment voluntarily. Most bloggers I know don't want their page being used in this manner.

Thanks, I did just that and the blog owner kindly removed the posts....

But now this guy has 30+ objects on his land that are from my store hidden and transparent, set at 10L, so that people will come to his land thinking they are getting my goods at a SUPER cheap price...the boxes are just named with my store name, and are empty, but this just shows me again that this guy is just trying to be a jerk and screw me over business wise...

Anyway, i think the only way to deal with this is for me to change the name of my store. I was going to do it anyway at some point....so meh....Lindens didnt help me, and not much else I can do....

Couldn't you file a cease-and-desist order under DMCA?

I am not sure a DMCA would the be the answer...I just honestly want this guy to leave me and my business alone.

Perhaps, just AR as necessary but don't feed him the feedback he wants, ignore him and see if he gets bored after a month or 2.

Do you have a group for your store? You could post an announcement explaining the situation, see how your customers react. Chances are people who really like your stuff will start ARing him as well; it's not in their best interests if they can't find your store again for fake search-entries, or have trouble recommending the items to friends. Good content on SL seems to get good customers, ones who are actually willing to help out and become fans of the work in addition to just consumers.

You could throw a party or other event and slip it in there as well, the more people who know about the abuse, the more who can report it and thus get LL's attention sooner. The better the awareness as well, the more people who will hand out landmarks and such so people can get your store that way, rather than relying on search.

Yikes, what a mess. The problem with starting over as a new account is, if you were to use any of your old designs/textures ever again, the fashionistas would start accusing you of stealing from yourself on their blogs, because they wouldn't know you were you. Then you would have to explain things in order to not tank the reputation of your new AV, and you'd be right back where you started with the guy harassing you.

I agree that you should enlist some help with the ARs. Not knowing the whole story, I don't know who's right and who's wrong as far as the background situation goes, but from what I can see, there's no question he's griefing you right now, and that is wrong.

YaY...well I have been filing AR for about a week now, enlisted the help of loyal customers and friends in my quest to get this guy to leave me alone, and it finally worked. LL must have contacted him and issued him a warning or suspension or something, because the false information on his profile has been removed.

I changed the name of my store, posted to my blog, made an announcement, and things seem to be fine...my customers totally understood where I was coming from and helped out with the AR's.

He still has his land named the same as my previous store, but from what it seems right now...his scheme to put me out of business has kind of backfired on him a little...him putting all those camping bots on his land to boost his traffic has actually ended up with customers going there and realizing they got the wrong spot, and then coming to my store. So my sales have actually gone way up since this whole mess has happened.

In any case, I am muted, so I cant tell him "thanks for the free advertising"...

I just wonder, if someone used all this negative energy to make someone miserable, what if this person actually turned it around and did something positive...its a shame really.

And...I am not making an ALT account and going undercover and doing all that, I just changed the name of the store, and hopefully he wont change the name of his land to "PINK COUTURE"...lol!

Thanks again everyone for your advice,

<3 Vanya

p.s.

Sorry for not answering the SL branding...that can be found here:
http://secondlife.com/corporate/brand/