People recording your Voice to make Gestures?

[Nimh20 Vandeverre]

The trolling issue I've been having is people recording my voice and making gestures.  I live in the U.S..  Assuming the people recording me are also from the U.S. is there any legal action I can take?

[Void Singer]

no.

[Bree Giffen]

Just report it through the standard AR channels. I've heard something like it recently in the welcome areas and it certainly sounds wrong to me. My guess is that the troll will simply get bored of it long before LL takes any action.

[Melita Magic]

Last I heard, it is illegal in the state of California to record someone without their knowledge or consent.

Also if you had a reasonable expectation of privacy, that would add weight to your claim.

And as far as TOS, if they were not part of the local surrounding but were in any way remotely monitoring the conversation, they would be breaking TOS.

I also believe it's the case that people cannot profit from the likeness of a person without a release form. That could be argued to include voice.

I believe that in some situations, a 'public figure' i.e. famous person's likeness can be used, such as in parodies. But this wouldn't fall into that category.

I don't know how successful you'd be. Part of the problem in SL is that people are everywhere. Good luck getting someone in New Guinea to show up in your state for a court hearing.

[Solar Legion]

If they are in the US and you want to waste the time of the court system .... Yes.

Any person living in a two-party consent state (applies to more than two party as well) is protected as the laws dictate that such states take precedence over single party consent states.

In short, if either party is in such a state, then a law is being broken. Granted a law which has yet to be aplied to Second Life and similar places, but it IS a law.

This same law has been used for chat logs and other such "recordings" as well.

So then ... You can go after persons whom post chat logs outside the service as well.

It would be rather nice if Linden Lab understood this and ceased attempting to dictate what you can do with your Logs and other information and instead insisted that you follow the laws of your general area. It would go a long way in the direction of silencing the people who like to Abuse Report over absolutly nothing (and yes, if you say something foolish and it gets spread to Estate Managers and such ... you are reporting over nothing. Self-censorship folks). 

[Void Singer]

a few fact that may bear mentioning....

SL (by user agreement) falls under california jusridictional laws, AND terms of TOS.

voice is a public service (exception, "Call").

[Perrie Juran]

Both Federal and State laws in the U.S. have now incorporated language using loose terms referring to "electronic communications or voice communications," endeavoring to cover evolving technologies.   These laws would 'trump' the TOS.

Federal and some state laws allow for me to record a private conversation between you and me without informing you.

But what about recording a conversation between two other people?  Federal and some state laws would allow you to record a conversation between two people with only the consent of one of the parties involved.

However, in some states, in both of the above situations, their laws require consent of ALL parties involved.  And that is where it gets crazy.  Because even if you are making the recording in a One Party consent State, if the other party lives in a State with stricter rules, you can still be charged with a crime in that State.  Prosecuting you might be difficult, but you can still be charged.

There still have not been a lot of federal rulings but it is interesting to note what they had to say about 'consent.'  These are from several different court rulings.

"consent under the Wiretap Act is not to be cavalierly implied.”

“consent should not casually be inferred”

"consent must be “actual,” not constructive.”

“Without actual notice, consent can only be implied when the surrounding circumstances convincingly
show that the party knew about and consented to the interception.”

"Furthermore, knowledge of the capability of monitoring alone cannot be considered implied consent.”

All of these cases dealt with the recording of voice conversations.

 

disclaimer: IANAL, however my knowledge comes from personal involvement in two situations.