Open letter to Linden Lab: Enforcing policies?

[Arielle Popstar]

2 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

Since when?  LL has absolutely no say over what is posted off of their services.  They never have.AFAIK.  

All Second Life Community Standards apply to all areas of Second Life, the Second Life Forums, and the Second Life Website.  Says nothing about off site.

Sure they have no say over what is posted elsewhere but that does not say they don't have the ability to ban someone "at their discretion" for doing so.

[Sparkle Bunny]

39 minutes ago, Theresa Tennyson said:

It never did. If the information in your profile that you've allowed anyone in Second Life to see could somehow endanger you, there was nothing stopping Sammy the Cat from your local businessman's protection society from creating a free account linked to a burner E-mail address and accessing the information that way.

I mean, he'd need to know already that a) you were signed up to SL and b) what your username was, but OK.

Edited January 24, 2023 by Sparkle Bunny
typo

[Rowan Amore]

2 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Sure they have no say over what is posted elsewhere but that does not say they don't have the ability to ban someone "at their discretion" for doing so.

And why would they do that?  I could post things you say in llcal.chat anonymously.  It's still out there.  

Maybe they should make another unenforceable policy about that.  

Edited January 24, 2023 by Rowan Amore

[Arielle Popstar]

2 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

And why would they do that?  I could post things you say in llcal.chat anonymously.  It's still out there.  

Maybe they should make another unenforceable policy about that.  

Well you did respond to a TPV dev who I strongly suspect are held to a higher standard then other residents.

[Rowan Amore]

1 minute ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Well you did respond to a TPV dev who I strongly suspect are held to a higher standard then other residents.

She could post under a pseudonym.  Edit out her name.  Whatever.  The point being, LL has no standing to limit what people can do offsite.  Their rules don't apply everywhere, ya know.  

[Arielle Popstar]

4 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

She could post under a pseudonym.  Edit out her name.  Whatever.  The point being, LL has no standing to limit what people can do offsite.  Their rules don't apply everywhere, ya know.  

Yes she could and also post using a VPN but that doesn't cancel the fact that if LL knows if a resident is doing something harmful to other residents, they can ban such at their own discretion. Their rules apply everywhere in that regard.

[Sparkle Bunny]

2 minutes ago, Rowan Amore said:

The point being, LL has no standing to limit what people can do offsite.  Their rules don't apply everywhere, ya know.  

Of course they don't. They can't stop people republishing other people's content. That's up to the people who own the content. Personally I'm not interested in handing over my RL name and address in order to file a DMCA, but the option's there.

What they can do is ban users/bots that exist solely for content-scraping purposes, or at the very least charge them for the privilege. They can ban bots for not declaring that they're bots. They can ban them because they don't like their username. Failing to respect the intellectual property clause seems a decent enough reason to me, but they don't even need a reason; they can ban them for any reason or none.

[Silent Mistwalker]

59 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

Well, the RedZone analogy is an interesting one.

It would be wrong to use it in an alarmist way: RedZone was outright evil. It preyed on people's fear and paranoia, and then became essentially a protection racket, whereby only those who paid for the product were protected from it.

I have seen nothing to suggest that these bots are being used for anything remotely analogous to that.

What's more, although this is more a technicality, RedZone used scripted objects and HUDs, rather than bots. And it collected information if you came to it: it didn't scour the grid scooping it up.

But . . . there's one important similarity between the two: both involve the collection of "publicly available information" in-world (which is to say, only "public" within the platform), and applied it to an off-platform database where it could be searched, manipulated, and so forth, without the restrictions of the LL ToS or LSL to constrain them.

LL did, finally, deal with RedZone, despite their guidelines about having no responsibility for information on 3rd party sites.

But they did so by removing the in-world objects and HUDs that were the mechanisms by which RedZone worked. The web site which we dare not name has only a few, very minor in-world applications (a Rez Day board? Anything else?)

So, the only way LL can effectively deal with that is by cutting off the information collection at the source. Which is to say . . . the bots.

A security orb is a type of bot. All of those things are controlled by scripts, not people as defined by LL. Even a vendor is a type of bot, technically. 

Is LL going to cut off our ability to make purchases inworld? No way in hell. Is LL going to cut off the ability to use a security orb on a parcel rented from a "3rd party" Hell no, they're used in BELLI. 

It's not the bots that are the problem. It's the people that use them for nefarious goals. Like ZFire. While what certain bots are doing isn't necessarily nefarious, it is a bit invasive. Remember when people raised a fuss about not being able to opt out of having their main profile tab pic thrown up on a board for all to see that you are the last person to visit the store? Now all those scripts have an opt out and have had for years. Same should go for the rez day boards. No one but LL needs to know where I am at any given time on the grid or what I am doing.

You couldn't opt out of RedZone without going to HIS WEBSITE AND LOGGING IN ON IT. That was deemed illegal in SL as well. 

 

[Silent Mistwalker]

1 hour ago, Innula Zenovka said:

How do you make that out?   RedZone depended on landowners (not bots) rezzing something on their land that scanned for new arrivals and rezzed something that grabbed their IP address using a well-known exploit involving parcel media and then posted them to an external database.   This database then tried to match the IP addresses thus collected and posted details of which avatars shared the same IP address, on the assumption they must belong to the same person, on a website for subscribers. 

Bots, in the sense of scripted agents, weren't involved in any way.   

See my reply to Scylla above.

[Sammy Huntsman]

I am just gonna say this, you are responsible for the info you put in your profiles. That being said, if you put a lot of your RL info into the RL Tab then yeah it will show up there. I honestly don't care about these bots flying around, as I am not practically sharing everything about myself. Basically, stop oversharing, and there wouldn't be a problem. 

[Rowan Amore]

8 minutes ago, Sparkle Bunny said:

Of course they don't. They can't stop people republishing other people's content. That's up to the people who own the content. Personally I'm not interested in handing over my RL name and address in order to file a DMCA, but the option's there.

What they can do is ban users/bots that exist solely for content-scraping purposes, or at the very least charge them for the privilege. They can ban bots for not declaring that they're bots. They can ban them because they don't like their username. Failing to respect the intellectual property clause seems a decent enough reason to me, but they don't even need a reason; they can ban them for any reason or none.

Which has been my point this whole time.  Change the bot policy.  As it stands, they only warn or ban bots for gaming traffic.  At least that what they say yet never do.

The thread is about what is and isn't enforced as far as policy is concerned.  There is no policy whatsoever about banning people for offsite postings nor copyright infringement offsite.  Each person has the capability of filing an infringement notice without involving LL.

[Casper Warden]

Hey, I thought I'd chime in here.

As someone who operates bots which conduct grid surveys to assist with the function of our products and services, my opinion is that - regardless of the LL terms of service - such a system should conduct itself in a respectful manner.

From what I can see, the bots are not collecting any information which is not publicly available, however, I can completely understand that residents may not want their avatar profile information published on the web - which appears to be the only transgression.

In my opinion, publishing avatar profile text and data really isn't necessary for the core functionality of this site, and provides a net reduction in privacy. I think that ideally, this single feature should be removed.

FWIW I can confirm that the L$ values listed under "Marketplace" / "Top Merchants" have no basis in reality

(Opinions expressed in this reply are solely mine and are not endorsed by or related to Linden in any way).

[Silent Mistwalker]

44 minutes ago, Coffee Pancake said:

Local chat is as public as profiles.

But I'm tempting a ban hammer if I relay that out of SL without the consent of all parties.

No. LL does not have any legal jurisdiction outside of their own servers. While LL can ban anyone they want for any reason, they can also be taken to court if they ban someone for something that occurs off LL property. Wrongful termination.

LL has made the statement many times over the years that they do NOT ban people for posting chat logs on website not affiliated with LL or is not hosted on LL servers. They know they do not have jurisdiction to do so in the US.

[Sparkle Bunny]

9 minutes ago, Sammy Huntsman said:

I am just gonna say this, you are responsible for the info you put in your profiles. That being said, if you put a lot of your RL info into the RL Tab then yeah it will show up there. I honestly don't care about these bots flying around, as I am not practically sharing everything about myself. Basically, stop oversharing, and there wouldn't be a problem. 

Cool, just grabbing your profile pic for myself then.

Guess you shouldn't have shared it.

[Sammy Huntsman]

6 minutes ago, Sparkle Bunny said:

Cool, just grabbing your profile pic for myself then.

Guess you shouldn't have shared it.

That's fine I don't care. Lol. I mean kinda petty but doesn't bug me. 

[Scylla Rhiadra]

15 minutes ago, Casper Warden said:

As someone who operates bots which conduct grid surveys to assist with the function of our products and services, my opinion is that - regardless of the LL terms of service - such a system should conduct itself in a respectful manner.

Totally legitimate use of bots.

15 minutes ago, Casper Warden said:

I can completely understand that residents may not want their avatar profile information published on the web - which appears to be the only transgression.

In my opinion, publishing avatar profile text and data really isn't necessary for the core functionality of this site, and provides a net reduction in privacy. I think that ideally, this single feature should be removed.

Eh . . . maybe not so much.

Thank you, Casper. This is actually a pretty useful exemplification of a core question being asked in this thread.

[Sparkle Bunny]

I know it doesn't bug you, you already made that clear.

Point is, some people care where their stuff gets republished even if you don't.

[Coffee Pancake]

18 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

No. LL does not have any legal jurisdiction outside of their own servers.

People have been explicitly poked about getting consent when making chat relays to external services, it might be "fine" now, but there was a time when it was very much not fine.

[Kathlen Onyx]

1 minute ago, Sparkle Bunny said:

I know it doesn't bug you, you already made that clear.

Point is, some people care where their stuff gets republished even if you don't.

Pretty childish if you ask me. Harassing another forum member because you don't like their opinion? 

[Rowan Amore]

Totally on topic....

Or...

You decide LL.

[Sparkle Bunny]

2 minutes ago, Sam1 Bellisserian said:

Pretty childish if you ask me. Harassing another forum member because you don't like their opinion? 

How is it harassment? She just said she's fine with her pics being reused anywhere. If I stole your profile pic, you might have a case. But I'm not going to because you haven't said it's OK. See how it works?

[Theresa Tennyson]

1 hour ago, Sparkle Bunny said:

I mean, he'd need to know already that a) you were signed up to SL and b) what your username was, but OK.

Which is what he'd need to know to find the same information on EvilSite, but EvilSite is almost completely unknown (except when people publicize it by complaining about it) and the searching appears to be less efficient. (Than Second Life's search - now that's saying something...)

Edited January 24, 2023 by Theresa Tennyson

[Sammy Huntsman]

59 minutes ago, Sparkle Bunny said:

I know it doesn't bug you, you already made that clear.

Point is, some people care where their stuff gets republished even if you don't.

Why I don't care, is due to me not oversharing on SL. And also at the same time, as a Linden is saying. The bots are using a script to grab public info on a profile. They are not grabbing our private info, such as our legal names, our addresses, email addresses and CC info. If it were doing that, then I would care. But then again, most countries are protected with laws that are similar to the GDPR. 

[Sammy Huntsman]

Do I think there should be a way to be able to opt-out? Sure I do. But I am one of those people who doesn't care if my public info is on some site. As I said, I am very careful with what I put on there. 

[Jennifer Boyle]

1 hour ago, Sammy Huntsman said:

I am just gonna say this, you are responsible for the info you put in your profiles. That being said, if you put a lot of your RL info into the RL Tab then yeah it will show up there. I honestly don't care about these bots flying around, as I am not practically sharing everything about myself. Basically, stop oversharing, and there wouldn't be a problem. 

I have always considered my profile to be public, and, therefore, have not put any information into it that I would not want to be public.