What is LL's take on those who say "If you IM me, you consent to have IMs posted"?

[Cordelia Trafalgar]

We see so many folks now posting in their profiles things like "By reading this I am informing you that any contact, IMs or messages you make to me will be construed as consent to post those IMs, etc..."  This is clearly against the spirit of the policy that states IMs may not be shared, and has been hailed as a legitimate way to get around that policy.  What is LL's official take on this "loophole"?

(Sorry to post on a topic so thoroughly discussed already...  I tried a diligent search prior to posting but was unsuccessful.  Thanks for replying!)

[Cinnamon Lohner]

LL is not going to give you an "official take" on this one here since this is a resident supported forum.  However this one has been discussed on these forums ad naseum for years now.  Bottom line is these statements of "consent" cannot over rule the TOS.  This is not a loophole.  Anyone posting chat logs or IM's without the consent of all parties is in violation of the TOS. Period.

--Cinn

[Peggy Paperdoll]

Linden Lab's "take" on such disclaimers is pretty clearly stated in the ToS.  There is no exception.......it's against the ToS to post any chat (open or private) anywhere on LL property (that's here on the forums, blogs or any website owned by LL and inworld.....including an IM to anyone).  It is an AR'able offense and can result in disciplinary action up to and including a perma-ban.

 

Anyone making such a statement is full of *you know what* and is probably someone you would want to stay away from anyway.........at the very least they are drama queens.  What they are saying is just as ridiculous as some person with a sign around their neck stating that you that if you speak to them, you give full and complete consent for them to take upskirt videos of you and post them on the Internet.  It's against the law in RL and his statement is stupidity on his part........and I doubt you'd want to be around such a person.

[Charolotte Caxton]

just type in TOS or chat tos

a few hits:

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:Residents%27_privacy_rights

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Linden_Lab_Official:Community_Participation_Guidelines

http://secondlife.com/corporate/tos.php

http://secondlife.com/corporate/privacy.php

http://secondlife.com/corporate/cs.php

as it has been discussed to death already I think common sense ruled that just because I type something in my profile that is against the rules, does not make it a legal loophole

(reading this constitutes as a binding contract to pay me 1 million billion lindens)

no makie sense, right?  

[Poenald Palen]

Can you sign or otherwise indicate consent you read and understood what he means and that you read and agreed to it? No. They can't confirm you read the notice and they DID sign up and agree to TOS.

Now, I wll paly a lawyer. /me poenald waddles back and forth making odd gestures and staring people during pauses...

Not only did they sign up for SL, agree to the TOS, and they also know and understand this part of the agreement very well...so they purger themselves if they claim 'it works' in a court. So, they can't get thier account back if they go to court to get it back...I guess.

I am not a lawyer, this is not a court and I am not YOUR lawyer! The YOUR part is important, because anyone giving you advice is not your lawyer, with your case, with your situation and saying "this one guy on the net said so" is totally not going to convince any court....which is what these guys are maybe hearing.

There is also another possability. They are cops, informants or otherwise claiming immunity and do this as extra protection to keep acounts active that might be in deep enough and can benifit from keeping cover? Not sure, but I know anyone can be an informant, no how dirty or illegal your lifestyle and basically this is from reading about this (about the budget and a few stories) and I know someone who knows a guy who was involved as a helper. He didn't go down in exchange for helping them take others out. SImple stuff, warriors code...right?

For anyone who thinks I am helping criminals, I am not! I do not know from experience these people are cops or informants! I am just going off something I noticed and some things I read about in the news! They are most likely fooled people that where fooled by someone who claims to be a lawyer, but will claim they are not THIER lawyer. They now have proven they read that part of TOS and had full intent to break it, because they will not say the same in IM chat and get consent and agreement figured out between them!!!

So, it appears to many they are trying to con a court into believing in the loophole. It sort of proves thier intent to do harm via IM's, which is what the TOS was there to stop?

Plus, the person just has to say "I didn't read it" in a court and how can they prove they didn't? I mean, UNLESS...they posted here and said they have read it! In that case all you can say is you didn't read that specific persons statements because Poenald said to not bother, so you never even tried to read it!

But, Poenald is NOT your lawyer, and is not saying anything other than an an opinion of how it looks to a court of his imagination....one poenald might even not like, in some situations! I am not saying they are wrong or right, I will not judge on it unless I know the reason and even then it all depends on the situation.

I am curious as to why some put this in thier profiles, but don't just say it after first contact. They know people just hit profile and then hit IM. WHy would they read it? It is a PROFILE, it tells people about you. They don't want to know about you, they want to IM you for something!!! How is a profile a legal agreement area, where do they click agree to confirm before they IM you? They can't, so you are left lossing the first line they send you IF you state you want them to indicate they agree to your posting it. If they say, "NO, and another thing..." You can only hang up. NO posting allowed really, IMHO. BUT, maybe there is a good reason to have it, like people sending one line threats via alt over and over and you wish to send these to the cops or a PI to investigate them? Maybe you have a SL avatar PI check out all your avatar contacts and they want a look at thier chat style, their vocab level and so on. THen they go join groups, infiltrate their places and retrieve info. Of course, they also have this line in thier profiles, so they can squeel back any info to their cleint! They might even do competitor intel work, for BI..Business Intellegence. They irk you, you threaten them and then they can basically NOT get into trouble for slander if they wish to sort of...well, personally post the info. I mean, they are (of course, inocently) only checking out your customer service style...you know, for BI! I made this one up myself to, ah...the anylitcal genius that I am...shall I continue till we get to time travellers trying to stop someone from calling someone a doush bag in IM so that the person will not relay the information across the internet and bog down an NSA computer by one millionth of a second enough to let some secret chinese info slip through the wires laying on the bottom of the ocean....leading to calamity as China gets a communication through it was time to tracki a sat, pick up some more data and it all ends up leading to two nations collaborating a mission that leads to an angered response from north korea that destroys the cure for cancer that lies in the future of a south korean women who sits in a park reading a gene rodenberry novel!!HUH<, HUHE!!! well, maybe not....oh, I just did...I can't stop the genius!!! WOW!

Ok, now poeple can tell I am being sarcastic over my ability to figure out what is happening here...I bet they are totally HUGE gossips and can't stop themselves!

[Charolotte Caxton]

way to go, poptart monster

[Ansariel Hiller]

There is no loophole. The TOS and CS are binding, everything else is no. Period.

[Poenald Palen]

poptarts? Nah, there is no frosting on those...wait, do they make them without frosting? hhhm. I never have figured out what those things are. I assume they are NOT cookies and that is about it...TM and all that. I can't imagine the cookie monsters agent liking his likeness being use all over. The cookie monster is a seriously trademarked monster, he can't have his identity used to endorse any old thing out there or have his likeness used! I mean, what if people beleive it is the real cookie monster and they tell everyone something that hurts his acting career? Anyway, totally off topic...uh. Yeah, this whole post was a mess. I started with a line that sort of explained what I think would play out, but then went all redundent and such.

[Marigold Devin]

---

Cordelia Trafalgar wrote:

We see so many folks now posting in their profiles things like "By reading this I am informing you that any contact, IMs or messages you make to me will be construed as consent to post those IMs, etc..."  This is clearly against the spirit of the policy that states IMs may not be shared, and has been hailed as a legitimate way to get around that policy.  What is LL's official take on this "loophole"?

(Sorry to post on a topic so thoroughly discussed already...  I tried a diligent search prior to posting but was unsuccessful.  Thanks for replying!)

---

If you caught someone actually sharing your private IMs with other people, and submitted an abuse report to LL, they would act in accordance with their current Terms of Service.  However, they are unlikely to do anything more than give the guilty party a warning, or even a one-day suspension initially. If a person persisted in sharing your IMs, in such a way that you felt was harrassment, the person could end up with a deleted account.  So their disclaimer on their profile is not valid at all.

Having said that, they CAN reproduce private IMs on a blog outside of Second Life, and LL are powerless to do anything about it.

As others have said in this thread, and the other threads on this particular subject, it is probably wise to steer clear of the sort of peerson who has felt the need to put such a disclaimer on their profile.  They are, as Peggy so finely put it, drama queens.        

[Charolotte Caxton]

i enjoyed reading it and i think maybe it was the gooey goodness of the poptart filling working within you

[Shockwave Yareach]

Brief:  You may not do it, regardless of the other person's permissions, stated or implied. 

You cannot claim a right which you do not have under the TOS, anymore than I can claim to own the money in a bank by walking in with a sign saying "Seeing me implies consent to take all your money".  The act is forbidden in the TOS and that's that, regardless of what is in anyone's profile.  That said though, most IM's are also stored as an unencrypted file on your computer in your directory.  And as much as LL has authority in SL with the TOS, US law states that your data on your computer belongs to you.  Thus legally you may do as you like.  Course, so then will LL and then bannage will follow, legal act or no.

However, it is common to munge logs so no avatar names are recognizable, and then post them under a different name in any forum not under LL's control.  While LL can still ban you for doing so, they have to know who you are first.  But a different username on a forum where they cannot demand user data and the lack of identifying names in the chatlog itself makes this impossible.  At the same time however, the act of changing the log renders the log itself quite suspect -- how do we know you didn't make it all up to begin with?  And since posting it there does nothing but fan lots of drama without fixing anything, it's really kind of pointless to bother with it in the first place.