Estate Level Governance blog post

There's a Linden blog post about a new abuse report system at http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/04/20/introducing-estate-level-governance .

One thing mentioned in this post is that one should at some point have the ability to ban alts when you ban an account.

This might have some interesting effects. As an example, banning a landbot might ban the normal account of the bot runner. Banning the Electric Sheep search bot might ban one of the folks in the sheep company.

It will be interesting to see how this develops.

Indeed, very interesting.

Chadrick seemed VERY responsive in the blog post - a wonderful thing.

I naturally have some questions and concerns, but it seems like this has been thought out and tested somewhat.

I'm not sure a formal system of reporting would mean anything terribly different in my case - people drop notecards to me or IM me with issues in my sim anyway.

Janitorial stuff like prim messes lying around I take care of... personal issues I don't get involved in (not my business).

We shall see, I guess.

What concerns me is what Chadwick stated about how the Lindens are going to watch bannings.

Enough sim bannings from these Estate Manager/Governors and they will be investigating your behavior.

Throw in banlink, an Endorsed site ...

And it could be very easy to find yourself banned from Second Life over a disagreement with ONE person.

reguarding bots, this might be necessary

Since if someone's running say 20 spybots, and you ban one from that company its logical they should all get banned.

Thanks VERY much, Suzanne, for starting this thread. This is an important subject, indeed, and needs a place for people to contribute their thoughts and views. Also, among other things, efforts to hijack and distract the Searchbot and Automated Burglary threads by raising this issue in them can now be referred here. Double thanks.

As to this issue itself, looks like a good thing, but as always the devil will be in the details - and also in whatever novel ways abusive people find to abuse this innovation.

One concern I thought not adequately addressed in the blog posts so far was the case where the estate owner is the abuser - including the hypothetical case where an estate owner sells out to a new owner who then sets out to persecute residents of the estate for whatever reason. Another is the possibility (one hopes remote!) that an estate owner chooses to harbor and support griefers.

I'm sure there are many other potential problems that will come to light. The difference between this and those other threads is that the principal subject of THIS thread, Linden Labs, may have its flaws but demonstrably wants to make SL a better place for its residents. The principal subject in the other threads seems to be making it clear that it does not, but instead, so far, seems to regard SL Residents much the way a meatpacker regards cattle - or, ahem, Sheep.

It will be a pleasure to contribute what we can here to help LL in its work on the estates innovation. It is to be hoped LL will also use its good offices to help with the increasingly disturbing problems being revealed in those other threads.

I had that thought, too.

And it bothered me very much when Chadrick said:

"If he's assaulting someone on his region, he has the right to do so, it's his."

I didn't get a chance to comment on that, as the comments had apparently stopped working, but it seems to me that there are quite a few crimes which are not okay, whether the person happens to own an island or not.

coco

If you are in a sim where the owner does get the abuse reports and the the Lindens don't, and you see stuff like US subjects breaking the online gambling laws, or engaging in ageplay etc., or violating the intolerance section of the Community Standards, selling copies of resident created objects, or other similar sorts of things, an abuse report in such an estate would be reviewed by the person that is engaging in or permitting such behaviors to take place, and no one else.

It doesn't happen very often, but there have been a few occassions where people typed out their personal RL details (name, phone, etc) in a Help Request or something more innocent ("This is the alt of ..." or other details that really didn't belong on a public channel. In a lot of cases I'd have to assume that those people were under the impression that it was safe to give all that information to a "support" channel.

I can only imagine what kind of revealing details people put about either themselves or the accused in Abuse Reports, and I know I really rarely filed an abuse report on the parcel where the actual abuse took place because the "where" wasn't really relevant to the report.

I still don't see what this is that is in any way different from what I can do now. Is it just that if someone files an AR I get it rather than getting a notecard as I do now? I can ban someone from my sim now, I don't see what else would happen.

What would be useful would be the capability to automatically stop griefing via LSL, e.g.

Scan for and remove objects from the land that belonged to banned AVs.
Shut off scripts to stop replicator or other griefing tools.
Get an event when objects were created on the land.

Then you could build automatic anti-griefing systems that acted immediately rather than having to wait for an AR process.

Im more worried about protecting the accused from the new "authorities".

The ban tracking really concerns me when I know there are already basically shared banlists.



As far as "powers" the only ones decribed that I see is that ARs will not go to LL but to the Estate Governors.


Perhaps someone who participated in the trial program could enlighten us on the differences.

While I am all for the idea of giving estate managers and eventually landowners on the mainland better tools to deal with abuse issues, I fear this whole deal sounds to me like the town Sheriff throwing a badge on the estate manager's desk and saying "You're on your own, I'm outa here!", while leaving them with nothing to enforce justice with but a spanking paddle.

The plan, as described, gives residents in a "self-governed sim" no recourse if their AR's fall on deaf ears. If the sim owner is the abuser, or is in league with them, or if they are just apathetic, there is NO recourse, other than to sell your assets in that sim and move elsewhere.

The plan, as described, gives estate owners in a "self-governed sim" no recourse if the nature of the reported abuse requires immediate and definitive action by Linden Lab that exceeds what any sim owner will be granted authority to dish out. It appears that all an estate can do is to ban that accused induvidual, and eventually, IF the promised linkage between alts and mains ever happens, the alts and main of the abuser. But this punishment ONLY affects their one estate, unless they are alo tied to something like BanLink to share info on abusers. There is no way for the "local sherrif", the estate owner, to "call in the state or federal authorities", IE the Lindens, to get someone permabanned for henious acts. The Lindens won't act until several estates ban the same abuser.

I asked the following in the blog:


Chadrick's reply?



Pardon me? I have NO choice, as a resident, as to whether the estate owner is going to opt in for this or not. And if they do, LL is giving me NO option if I don't like it, other than moving out and finding a new sim.

Apparently, if an estate signs up for this, THERE IS NO TOS IN THOSE SIMS. Because LL will NOT DO ANYTHING unless the estate owner in that sim AND other sims has acted to ban someone.

An estate owner can sign up for this, and there is NO WAY to escalate issues that they refuse to handle or that that don't have the tools to handle. NONE.

It is VERY unclear if one even has the option of escaping to some mainland sim and filing an AR from there, to get it into the Linden's queue. At one point Chadrick said "If an incident is reported on Linden run land, like the mainland, Linden will be responsible for it’s resolution. If it happens on an island, then the effect of that reports resolution, made by the estate manager/owner, will only affect that region." But when I asked about escalating an issue, he didn't say "Just go to the mainland and report it again." What he said was that if an issue happened on a self-goverened estate, and the estate owner allowed it, then "If people are reporting a region owner, it’s up to the region owner to decide what to do. Meaning - If a region owner is being abusive to the point of you having to report him, well he can run his region the way he wants, you should probably not hang out there."

Again, pardon me? That sounds a lot like saying that a griefer group could buy an Estate, choose to be 'self governed', and run rampant from there, ignoring the TOS completely.

There are ALREADY sims out there that choose to harbor known griefer groups. If this goes into effect, and if there is no escalation path for reporting abuse in those sims to a "higher authority", then I fear greatly for our future.

This could SO easily be answered by LL, just by assuring people that if a resident feels an AR is being ingored by the estate, they can TP to a Linden-run sim and file a new complaint there. Just assure us that if we file it outside the estate, a Linden will look at it, and not just hand it back to the estate management.

They also need to assure us that if the Estate gets handed a case that requires more than an estate level ban, they can call in the Lindens for higher-level action. Why could they not give me that assurance? What if there's a 14 year old roleplaying a whore on the adult grid and admitting to everyone what their age is? WHY can't we get the Lindens to investigate something like that immediately? What if someone is clearly guilty of an offense that on Linden land would result in an immediate lifetime ban? They just get an Estate ban, and are free to go to some other estate and cash in their profits, and try again?

As explained in that Blog post, there is a gaping hole where the most serious offenses are concerned. Yes, the Estates can more readily deal with the small stuff. That is great. But what about major crimes? I repeatedly asked, and got no satisfactory answer. Apparently a grid crasher, a major thief, or a minor on the grid, will only get dealt with by Lindens after they have been reported by multiple Estates.

It's like saying you won't lift a finger to stop an arsonist until he's burned down several homes, even if the estate manager caught him red-handed after the first one, with the gas can and matches in his hands. And all LL can say is "Sorry. Wait till he's screwed over a few more estates. Then maybe we'll look into it."

Ummm in the US we are still citizens not subjects. Of course the two major partys are doing every thing they can to change this.

I consider the ability to influence someone's access to their account to be a far more dangerous weapon than 1000 orbit/push/particle/cage guns.

I would like to know if LL will take into account the fact that when someone gets banned from a bunch of sims all at once it still might have only been one problem.

I dont like giving residents any police powers over other residents. Im encouraged that the actual powers given will be limited.

But Im very discouraged by some of the other things Chadwick said, such as the investigations based on multiple bannings and supreme authority of Estate Governors (beyond banning)



Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

Agreed, Colette. Much will depend on how LL conducts its "investigations."