Spitting Over Daniel Linden's Fence: A Playful Analogy

In a videotaped conversation defending the ambiguity of his blog post regarding "broadly offensive" material, Daniel Linden says LL will not define the line because if they do so then people will "go right up to the line and spit over it."

This justification has been mentioned a number of times in this forum, and has mostly been met with reluctant approval. We all know some people will push the line if they know where the line is. But the more I have thought about this, the less reasonable his argument appears.

Analogy:

Mayor: We expect residents of this city to report people who drive too fast on our streets. We need a safe community. Our police await your reports 24/7. Persons caught driving too fast may have their possessions confiscated, including land, and will be exiled from the city.

Person A: OMG! What is the speed-limit? I don't want to go over it! There was never a speed-limit before!

Person B: Does this include the private race track on my own land? You previously approved of my race track.

Mayor: (silence)

Person C: I am afraid to drive down the street at all, if I don't know the speed-limit! Please, Mr Mayor, tell us the speed-limit?

Person D: About time! I hate speeders! Speeders are freaks! Save teh childrens.

Person E: I don't even drive, but if others want to drive, I think they should be allowed to drive. Maybe not on the public streets, but on their own land.

Person A: What recourse do people have who are reported to drive too fast? What if someone just doesn't like someone else and CLAIMS they drove too fast? You say the police are there 24/7, yet they don't respond to cries for help when thieves break into our houses or when the (electric) grid goes down. Is there a trial? A jury? A judge? Can a person defend himself?

Mayor: (silence)

Person B: I bought my land for the specific purpose of building a race track. Does this law apply to my track?

Person A: He said "our streets" so that includes your land. That includes the entire city!

Person B: I don't think it's anyone else's business what I do on my land.

Person D: Racing is immoral. I'll report all you immoral people. Save teh childrens.

Person C: Is the limit 10mph? 25mph? 60mph? 75mph? 90mph?

Major: I am not going to tell you the speed-limit, because as soon as I tell you the speed-limit, some of you will go right up to that speed-limit...and go a little faster.

Person A: But without a speed-limit, we are afraid to drive at all! We don't know if we are close to the limit or far far from it or over it! How can we abide by a law that is undefined?

Person B: But what about my race-track? Does the limit apply to my track? That's why I came to this town! That's why I bought land here!

Mayor's Speech-Writer: (condescendingly) In a city of freedom, can't you imagine something better than a race-track?

Person D: Is it my land or isn't it? What I do on my land is none of your concern! If you don't like how fast I drive on my race-track, then GET OFF IT!

Person C: I don't want to go over the limit.... but I want to go down any street I want to go down. How fast is too fast? Will you force me to walk the streets?

Person D: Street-walkers are immoral. I'll report all you people. Save teh childrens.

Person C:

Person A: Children shouldn't be on our streets in the first place. What does that have to do with telling us the speed-limit?

Person D: When you are all exiled, I'll have the streets to myself. Save teh childrens.

Person B: I don't care about the public streets, but my race-track is on MY land!

Person D: The land belongs to the city and they can take it back at any time. You have no rights to it.

Person B: WTF am I PAYING for then?

Person D: Racing is immoral. I will report you even on your racetrack. Save teh childrens.

Person C: I don't like living here any more.

Person D: Good riddance, freak. We don't like your kind round here. Save teh childrens.
...................................................................................................

When you change a few of the words, the absurdity of Daniel Linden's position (and Robin's apparently) becomes crystal-clear. Unclear laws are only enforceable in a totalitarian society in which the residents have no rights. Is THAT the best vision of SL that the Lindens can come up with? Draw your line. If people spit over it, go after those people. Leaving the line undefined gives license to those who wish to push boundaries and severely and unnecessarily restricts the freedom of people who just want to know how fast they can go down the street without getting into trouble.

Respond quick before our discussion is silenced by a thread lock.

No, it is NOT reasonable to expect us to play guessing games with 'teh rulez.'* By not knowing 'teh rulez' someone is going to get banned for no apparent reason and well, then LL will hear the call of the higher power, the almighty 'Law Suit.'

I don't care what the ToS states about the L not being worth anything.. if one can legally sell it for USD, then it has value. And by 'wrongfully' banning someone for something that isn't even defined is just further depriving them of their money. So, it's inevitable that they are going to get sued into defining 'teh rulez.'

*(Until they actually define them, I shall hence forth call them 'teh rulez.' They will become 'the rules' when they are actually rules and not some vague bit of pipe smoke.)

Daniel was smart in not defining what "broadly offensive" meant. Defining it means that would be a definitive border to which would need to be constantlly monitored. And tell me..do you think LL is gonna hire virtual border patrols? Nope, that would cost money for employees.

BTW Sweet, I loved the analogy.

I didnt need to be convinced that statement was bullshit, but thank you for a good laugh. Nicely done.

I totally agree.

wipes pb&j off my screen

The reason LL doesn't clearly define what is ok and what not: LL wants to tolerate basically everything, unless someone important finds it intolerable (IBM, the RL media, the legal authorities of Timbuktu, the Pope, Queen Elizabeth, Anshe Chung etc.). In that case they can point to blurry rules, declare it to be broadly offensive, tar and feather the offender who wasn't aware of doing anything wrong on his own land, kick him off the grid, annex his land and rob him of his money.

Clear rules wouldn't mean more work for LL. They could still tolerate everything, just as they do now, until someone complains. But it puts them into the predicament of possibly having to tell their valued investor / the media / the legal authorities of Timbuktu that they're very sorry, but they can't roast this broadly offensive resident on the virtual electric chair, because he/she didn't break any rules by uploading Mohammed cartoons, opening a gay bar or making fun of the Timbuktian government. That's what LL wants to avoid, not policing the grid which they don't do in any case.

But as a resident, I badly need to know if I'm allowed to upload a Mohammed cartoon or open a gay bar. "Broadly offensive" could mean pretty much anything. As it is, I could be robbed of account, land and money at any moment, because some broadly important person is broadly offended by the shape of my nose. That's no acceptable condition for someone who has invested money in SL and tries to run a small business here.

Not policing the grid encourges anarchy....which, I think Philip has already been quoted as saying, "Second Life is like the wild, wild west." Sooner or later, SL will need some sort of policing...otherwise, it becomes another failed venture.

I agree with Aleister on that. It is impossible for them to police the grid with the rules they do have, so what's one more, other than to give the users some protection from the whims of outraged corporations? Heck, it became impossible for them to police the grid when the concurrent logins hit 5,000!

But what I read was, "Well, we'll have two outcomes for this: 1) the users will start reporting everyone until there isn't anyone left who can possibly be offensive.. or 2) the users will ignore this post as irrelevant. Either way, we look good for the press."

In other words, the post actually IS irrelevant, until someone complains. At which time, if the complaint is acted on (or not), then we have our 'rulez' being defined. And if it results in a lawsuit because the 'rulez' were not defined beforehand, then maybe LL will learn the use of forethought and define the 'rulez' before it happens again. (Gee, I seem to be lawsuit happy, don't I? But sadly, this does seem to be the only thing that might wake LL up.)

Why should the grid have another form of policing as the regular 2D internet? If someone's website breaks RL laws, and his website is brought to the attention of RL authorities, he might risk a lawsuit if he happens to be a citizen of the country where his website violates the law and / or his website happens to be hosted on a server in this country. It's not the responsibility of an ISP to search for illegal web content.

There won't be a lawsuit for that, though.

Essentially, there's no way that someone can be banned and then sue because the rules they broke weren't clear - because the TOS allows the Lindens to ban anyone they like, for no reason.

Legally, the only choice LL have to offer is not to play SL if you don't like the rules being blurry.

(At least the USA folks here don't have their RL governments doing essentially the same thing...)

Iran has just passed a law making the production of pornography a capital offense. Does that mean that if the government of Iran complained to LL about someone making pornography in SL that LL would send out a death squad? Once you allow outsiders to control your actions you are on a slippery slope to your doom.

Hi, welcome to America, where you don't have to be able to win in order to sue and get your 15 minutes of fame!

*shrugs* The first thing that would be challenged in any lawsuit is what has already been opined in court, that LL needs to work on the whole 'forced mediation' thing. The opinion was that it was unfairly weighted in Linden Labs favor. So, with that one opinion, it leaves wiggle room for others.

And as I so 'perkily' stated, one doesn't have to win to prove the point.. and with the media it provides, who knows? If the publicity gets bad enough, it might make LL rethink the whole thing. They really need a better appeals system themselves, if they want to really save money.

This makes a lot of sense. LL merely facilitate our activities - policing them is not really their job as such. As long as LL are operating within the law of the countries in which they operate (and they are now a multi-national company of course) then they should not, and probably will not, go beyond the bare minimum of what is necessary to remain within the laws of said countries. That's as it should be.

The problem with the web analogy is that:
a) some of the content that Daniel is talking about is illegal to _download_, not just to host.
b) when you visit a sim other than a private island or a wholly owned mainland sim, you download everything in it, including things you aren't interested in and may not even know about.

Part b) is essentially the entire problem. When you visit a website, there's no danger that your system is silently downloading the content of the child pornography site that is only 1 AP address different. In SL, that can happen.

I think many see the speeding analogy is very accurate, but, it isn't quite.

Imagine the mayor of the town being held hostage by a much larger group of several governments, all who lay claim to the city and all in conflict with each other.

The town borders all these countries, and the border stands the possibility of being slammed shut to any number of them, thus hurting us all economically.

The mayor has no hope of pleasing them all, and none of these governments is going to waste 2 seconds to make up new rules that fit with all the other countries.

So... just what *should* the mayor say?

Or should we simply cut off all the Belgians, or the Germans or the Chinese or the Iranians in advance?

Which, and who decides?

Clever & amusing post, Sweet.

You did forgot me though, person F, who in RL never pays attention to speed limit signs and never gets tickets. Not because I drive like an old lady but because I'm aware of where I am and drive appropriatly for the area.

/me shrugs.


You're saying that people should be punished (or whatever) if they spit over the line but do not actually cross the line themselves? Hm.. What if they kick dirt over the line? How about if they try to kick dirt at - *not* over - the line but the dirt accidently goes over the line? What if they're near the line and somebody manages to push them over it?

The talk of rights & laws & such don't mean much - SL is all private property.

The terms "broadly offensive" strangely (and sadly) reminds me a french law:

«Le fait soit de fabriquer, de transporter, de diffuser par quelque moyen que ce soit et quel qu'en soit le support un message à caractère violent ou pornographique ou de nature à porter gravement atteinte à la dignité humaine, soit de faire commerce d'un tel message, est puni de trois ans d'emprisonnement et de 75000 euros d'amende lorsque ce message est susceptible d'être vu ou perçu par un mineur.»

"Gravement attentatoire (à la dignité humaine)" is exactly the same as "broadly offensive (to human dignity)". About anything may be "gravement attentatoire", depending on your race, gender, religion... You will have to go in court to know. This fuzzy law is the key of the "internet governance" thing, making ISPs fearing a lawsuit to adopt highly restrictive Terms Of Service, giving them full control over customer's content. If they don't, the will be taken as liable.

The result is a generalized private (instead of legal) censorship over every citizen's freedom of expression.

Personally, I agree strongly with the OP, considering the severity of the penalty for breaking these rules.

The penalty for breaking these unwritten rules is being banned from SL, which according to the RL analogy is equivalent to a death sentence at worst, life imprisonment with no hope of parole at best.

Now, RL laws are fuzzy in some areas, I'll admit. But with regard to those crimes which can carry the two RL penalties noted above, they are extremely specific indeed. Except in places run by dodgy 3rd world governments, you don't find people sentenced to death or life imprisonment without them being extremely aware that they are about to break a rule before the act.

Fuzzy rules are fine (tough reluctantly so) if a suspension is the only penalty they can carry. Fuzzy rules where the penalty is banning from SL is what I expect from a banana republic at best.

It's sad to see how censorship seems to be the internet flagship of so many so called "democratic" and "free" countries.

That's the result of a 10 years fight Kyrah, and they won. They won over our Constitution, which states that only a judge may limit our freedom of speech. Activists managed to have these law censored by our Conseil Constitutionnel (a court in charge to check that laws don't break constitutional rules). Even François Fillon, today Prime Minister, had been backslashed in 1996:

http://www.conseil-constitutionnel.fr/decision/1996/96378dc.htm

But monthes after monthes, they came back with new laws, and finally they did it. As did almost all democratic coutries.

The moment they won is when the declaration of human rights was removed from the french constitution (for france at least) .
After this moment pretty much everything could be removed.
Its funny to see that for example the gun ban in france date from the vichy occupation government.

I agree with your analogy no 2 Raudf.

This "Broadley Offensive" catagory is so vague and apparently after 20+ abuse reports of avatar screwing activities on a PG sim (which I don't even consider should be a debatable option), appear to be overlooked by our "Friends". Your analogy No 1 just completely misses the point. -- Just ignore the problem and hopefully it will go away, but at least we don't have to lose people from the grid.--- It will never happen.

This made me grin Very funny!

So, what shape exactly is your nose?