Petition and Poll: Reinstate CrisMid

Can you point me to this part of the TOS? I can't find it.

You didn't quote the relevant part of the TOS, and after much looking, I can't find it. Can you point me to it?

Found the applicable provision, it's a matrixed provision:



Still a moot point actually because as you say Cris did not post the procedure.

I remember that incident Bri, was awful. By the way, it's really good to see you on the forums again!

I saw that, but I thought there must be more. Does that really cover this? "Viruses, Trojan horses, worms, spyware, time bombs, cancelbots or other computer programming routines" - it's none of those things. "Intended to damage, detrimentally intefere with, surreptitiously intercept or expropriate any system", is dependant on one it being one of those things.

He said there was an exploit, where and what it was capable of, but he didn't post the means by which to reproduce it. Even is he had, it wasn't any kind of computer programming thing that caused the exploit, it was simply using the tools in the manner in which they were intended that caused it. No code involved, anywhere, except LL's buggy code that allowed it. Just doing something you would ordinarily do. That's how it was discovered in the first place. It wasn't a computer programming routine.

There's a key word you didn't highlight. "Intended." The means by which to do this weren't intended to damage or detrimentally interfere with anything. Just doing something you're supposed to be able to do. Nor did he intend to damage anything. The only possible intention could be on the part of a third party, but once again, he didn't tell them how to do it. As you said, it's a moot point because of that. It certainly doesn't seem to say anything that encompasses don't even post about its existence.

Reading that, I may be wrong, but I have to conclude he didn't break the TOS, in any way. Even if I'm wrong on that, I'd have to say that is not clear enough on this issue for customers to be fairly informed of their responsibilities here. Fuzzy enough for them to clarify it for their customers before breaking out the heavy weapons.

Doesn't need to be any more once it's covered.



As you say he didn't post the details exactly why I said the point was moot.

The programming in this case would precisely be the in-game tools.

As silly as it may sound to you, that's exactly how such provisions would work. They're designed to cover ground and situations, not necessarily enumerate all the applicable terminology.



I should have, however the intent is not that of the poster but that of the procedure. Legalese, yes. Gotta hate it but that's how it works. It's all about the description of the program and not the poster. The procedure has damage intent.



If the procedure was posted, then regardless of the intent of the post the TOS was broken.

Yes, I believe the provisions could be stated simpler.

I'm not going to argue the point about exploits vs TOS because it's a common provision in the industry. It's stated differently in other places and some do it more explicitly.

People should not be arguing whether posting the procedure is a TOS violation. They should be arguing about the absence of the procedure in CrisMid's post.

Presence of the procedure in a post is an open-and-shut case.


P.S. Like when designing anti-griefer measures you have to think like a criminal, when looking at TOS and other legal mumbo-jumbo you have to think like a lawyer to even read them. I really hate legalese because of the fuzziness you describe, however learning to read it has become a necessary survival skill.

Signed...I see nothing wrong with what Cristiano posted. As many have said already, he did not tell everyone HOW to do it, he was merely calling attention to a MAJOR exploit that needed immediate action, which IMO was absolutely the RIGHT thing to do.
Thank you, Cris.

I understand your points, and the bit you've put in bold here is correct. My point was really, legalese isn't clear enough communication with your customers for them to know how to deal with this. You shouldn't have to be a lawyer to understand the rules. That may cover them legally, but how about putting it in plain English somewhere for their customers? Like in the Guidelines. Explain it first, before you go clubbing well-intended people with it.

I have to add, in the past they have set an entirely opposite precedent. There was an exploit found not so long ago, that allowed people to bid on auctions not yet started, and not at the price they usually started. The means by which this was possible was posted. LL simply posted, thanking them for drawing their attention to it.

You know? That's a good idea. There was this TOS on a site somewhere that had the full legal version and a plain text translation which though not complete still covered the major points. Perhaps LL can do the same? LL can afford to have this done because it's only done once and needs no maintenance unless the TOS is altered.



Now this is not good. But I will venture a guess that this is because the Auction exploit did not destroy the basic functionality of the world, unlike the delete stuff exploit.

You'd be right, it did however, allow people to cheat LL out of a significant amount of revenue. It's definitely technically a different kind of exploit, but you can see how the different treatment of it could cause confusion about the correct way to handle things. They didn't, from memory, say how to handle exploits in the future.

Very true.

I would serve the interest of LL and all residents to detail reliable methods by which exploits can be dealt with.

First, they already have the bug report system that they will revise with categories to make reports easier to sift through. On our end we will need how learn to write those reports properly. For those who have been frustrated by the bug report system remember that a reliable, clearly documented, method of reproducing the bug is absolutely essential to getting the bug fixed.

Second LL needs to give us a reliable and safe procedure of sending out warnings regarding exploits to other so they can protect their stuff. Such a warning is normally not needed in MMOGs because of lack of user-made content. On our end we have to learn to send such warnings as per procedure.

Who is CrisMid? never seen the name before this thread

Sorry to go a little OT, but.. What a dangerous statement..

I can see the headlines.

"Local politician admits child labour scandle..."
"Local politician says "UK under Labour is a totalitarian state..." "
"Blair gone by May, says local politican..."

In terms of his innocence you're quite right - and if this was conducted in a court of law one would expect the authorities to do the right thing in the light of the evidence, however experience has shown LL doesn't behave in this manner, hence the necessity of discussing this issue on other levels too rather than purely the blind application of the law.

For example, there can't be a Linden who doesn't know who Cris is and that he would never act maliciously in this respect, including whoever meted out the punishment. There are those who have said it doesn't matter who is supposed to have commited the crime, but it might well matter if it was the fact that as a leading member of the community, Cris had, for the first time, been particularly critical and outspoken of LL and the recent update as well. It's possible he was not being punished purely for the "crime" we think he was. If this was the case, focusing relentlessly on the specifics of the TOS might be to miss the point.

When do we get an official answer/statement in this thread?

Such information must as always be the best to stop rumours and angry/frustrated/sad residents.

/Tina

Part of my point. There is a black hole in this case. We do not have the info on the Linden side. There may be an important piece none of us saw. For all we know it had nothing to do with the forum post.




Exactly why I'd rather LL come forward. Heated emotions caused by rumors are quieted by formal and official announcements. At least with announcements you can get your emotions worked up about something real.

lol - number two I would agree with.

But next May I will be the one going, irrespective of what Blair does.

If the Lindens had any respect at all for their residents we would have had a full and frank response when this all blew up.

I am not expecting one at all.

Never. Owning their apparent mistakes has never been a LL strong suit, and they have always been vague and sketchy with details of any disciplinary actions in the past (the latter actually making sense to me).

My understanding is that Christiano first filed a Bug Report, then contacted Live Help and at least one (maybe more) Lindens about it directly. It was only hours later that he posted about its existence. One can assume he felt his earlier efforts to prevent resident's content loss had not been taken seriously.

Then he posted to the forums.

The Lindens had the grid closed to login **very** shortly thereafter.

Inasmuch as he omitted the salient steps to reproduce the expolit in his post, I think discipline/suspension was a poor call. Owning up to this and/or clarification from LL would be the brilliant thing to do, but, alas, this will not happen.

In this case I am suitably unimpressed.

Great post encapsulating the big picture which we easily lose sight of when discussion participants get distracted by individuals rather than focusing on the issues and the ensuing implications of an action.

My guess is that LL's biggest fear is that, if they reverse a resmod decision that really needs to be reversed, they'd not only be admitting that the resmod programme isn't working as it should, but they'd also be setting a precedent for reversal of every other poor moderating call that has ever been made, where many innocent people (including me) have suffered because of something we are supposed to have done, yet are unable to be given proof of those accusations and guilt.

Why do you think there has been no Linden input after several days of this thread?

Because they're scared.

Lewis

They don't have to be scared and they don't have to reverse everything. They can just start with this one and do better from hereon.

That is assuming of course that it was a bad call in the first place.

But even if it weren't a bad call, it won't hurt to bring it up. Clearing the air is really the best way to go. It kills rumors and speculations.

If it was a bad call, nothing wrong with owning up.

Something that has gotten this much attention deserves at least a statement.

Well I suppose at some point, I should probably interject something here, as the subject of this petition who happens to be fresh off of suspension.

First of all, I want to thank everyone for the support and encouragement. It has been completely unexpected, and overwhelming, and honestly makes up for the rest of this. I have to admit, right now I feel a bit leery to discuss this at all, given the punishment happy nature of the current forum moderators, so I will post most of my thoughts externally to these forums. However, this is what I do have to say, if it gets me in trouble, so be it.

While I appreciate the sentiments expressed both pro and con regarding my suspension, this ultimately is about an issue larger than just one bad judgement call on a TOS violation. It ultimately is about Linden Lab criminalizing the very residents who support them, while at the same time, as Cocoanut so eloquently expressed in a previous post, they let those who are not invested at all in SL damage it with very little recourse, while those most invested in SL are regularly criminalized and have the threat of losing everything because of the indefensible rule of tying your speech in the forums to your access to SL.

To address a couple of things that have come up within this thread and other discussions I have seen of this, I do not think I should have been treated differently because of the length of my time in SL or whatever I have contributed. I had no warnings or other infractions going into this. I expected to be treated fairly and reasonably under the TOS we all agree to. As I have learned, and as many others have experienced, there is no such thing as fairly and reasonably when it comes to the arbitrary enforcement of their own purposely vague rules. Their enforcement of the TOS is selective, inconsistent, and apparently beyond questioning.

I was lucky that I knew what the TOS letter was referring to - many people receive violations that do not give any clear indicator of what their supposed infraction is. There is no reason, for example, that Lewis Nerd should not be able to find out EXACTLY what post he received a warning for. That is completely unacceptable - the system has no transparency, and customers have no recourse. Abuse-manager is a joke - you don't even get the courtesy of a response one way or another. A system like that is a breeding ground for abuse, and it often seems to be used more to settle individual scores with users than it does to apply any kind of discipline fairly. We were long ago promised more transparency into the process - a police blotter does not count.

As far as the action at the root cause of this, in the end, what was most important to me was getting information out to people that they could use to protect themselves. I could have just told my friends - screw everyone else's builds, right? I mean, it had already been going on for several hours, builds will being returned, you had a high profile event going on that could easily have been targetted, and you have thousands of accounts with no verification information that have been a breeding ground for griefers.

Furthermore, this was late on a Saturday night in the black hole period where LL disappears from Friday until Monday since 3 1/2 years later, LL is still not fully a 7 day operation. To me, it was far more important to warn people than to . The sheer number of IMs I have received from people thanking me for that has made all of this worth it - if it prevented one person from losing their build to this exploit, all this has been worth it and I would do it again. I was very careful not to include the exact set of rather obscure steps needed - but apparently, just warning people was too much.

Some may disagree with having posted about it at all, and I accept that, as you are entitled to your opinion. This was not some theoretical thing that could happen, this was actively happening and LL's track record of moving quickly to address such things is hardly stellar. After 3 1/2 years of damage from exploits, content theft, etc.. that still continues with no recourse, I felt it was reasonable to err on the side of allowing others to protect themselves and not wait in hopes that LL would rise to the occasion.

Anyway, that is all I have to say about this - I am working on a blog entry about it that I will expand a bit about some things, but in the end, it is over with. I will not be one of those people who talks about this forevermore. It certainly has damaged my enthusiasm for SL and for LL in particular, but I am sure that will pass, and if not, oh well. The appeals process seems to have done nothing, nor did this thread, and that is fine. I didn't expect it to. I do hope the outcry about all of this does make Linden Lab think twice about shooting the messenger in the future. One positive thing it has led to is there will soon be a formal process in place for alerting LL of urgent bugs in order to get a timely response. It remains to be seen how effective that will be, but if it leads to improved protections and response, then again, all this was worth it to me.

Thank you again for the incredible support.

Good to have you back and thanks for the great post.

Welcome back.



I still have to receive a satisfactory answer to that one, despite in-depth conversations with three Lindens. If something was serious enough to be considered report-worthy, shouldn't a copy be on my file somewhere? No evidence = no case = warning should be reversed.

Like your situation, I have had my faith in LL seriously dented possibly never to recover. Yet people like you and me, who are keen, active, and providing a lot for SL residents, are the very people that LL need to keep happy, instead of the griefer who keeps coming back again and again.

Lewis