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IM Sharing Disclaimers, are they valid? Is there any way to make one valid?


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I have seen the Disclosure Policy in the ToS and I have seen MANY different forms of disclaimers in profiles, are any of these valid?

I have been told by several people that they aren't though it does seam to me that there would be a way to do so by my reading of the ToS.

ToS States;

 

Disclosure

Residents are entitled to a reasonable level of privacy with regard to their Second Life experience. Sharing personal information about your fellow Residents without their consent -- including gender, religion, age, marital status, race, sexual preference, alternate account names, and real-world location beyond what is provided by them in their Resident profile -- is not allowed. Remotely monitoring conversations in Second Life, posting conversation logs, or sharing conversation logs without the participants' consent are all prohibited.

It seams to me that defining "consent" is the important thing here. Is having the chance to see a disclaimer in a profile and IM'ing or sharing personal info anyway "consent" not likely.

However, if one was to use an auto response so that each IM conversation began with a statement  that said something like;

"by continuing this conversation you are agreing that you have read and understand the Terms of Service in regards to the disclosure of this IM conversation and it's contents, and furthermore consent to my disclosure if this conversation"

Couldn't continuing a conversation after a direct statement like that be considered consent?

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no, legal consent requires more than a disclaimer, no matter where you place it. the person must make an actual statement of consent. disclaimers may only serve as warnings, and then only where the disclaiming party has control. it's why modern click wrapped software licenses use "agree" buttons instead of "ok" or "next".

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Ahh yeah I'd agree there, more of a curious thought and an attempt to better understand this rule.

Let me toss out one more question here, once an IM has been shared, is the next person to share the same IM also violating the ToS?

Let's say I talked to a girl in SL, this girl copied my chat to my SL wife, and she copied it back to me? Has my wife SL wife violated the ToS with her action?

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Hmmm. Well... The theoretical girl who copied the theoretical chat and passed it to your theoretical wife is certainly violating TOS. Theoretically. However, the act of passing that chat to a third party might imply consent on her part. And I'm sure you would give consent to your theoretical wife. :smileywink:

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That theory makes sense to me. Now if the wife passed it along to someone else that's a different story.

@Korben:


Korben Rage wrote:

Ahh yeah I'd agree there, more of a curious thought and an attempt to better understand this rule.

Let me toss out one more question here, once an IM has been shared, is the next person to share the same IM also violating the ToS?

Let's say I engaged in intimate relations with my girlfriend in SL, my girlfriend copied my chat to my SL wife, and she copied it back to me as proof for the divorce? Has my wife SL wife violated the ToS with her action?

FIFY... lol.

...Dres

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The disclaimers are invalid because they don't change the TOS, which resident do not have the power to change.

As I have said before, what I wonder about is why it's in the TOS.  There is no such restriction in RL.  If you send me an IM, or email, or letter in RL, it's mine to do with as I please.  In many US states it is legal for one party to a telephone conversation to record it without knowledge or consent of the other party, and the recorder can do whatever she wants with the recording.

What is the logic of being more restrictive in SL than in RL?

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Disclaimers in your profile are not valid period. I order for you to share a conversation be it open chat or local chat ALL parties have to agree to it.

And with your hypothetical question, both would be violating the TOS.

You can however share conversation out of world. As long as it is not a linden lab website or a website that has rules against it you can share any info you want. Like say on face book, my space, messenger or on a blog. So if you want to share a convo with someone just take out of world.

Also remember to take a grain of salt with any convo's someone shares with you. They can easily be manipulated or completely fabricated. Only LL can see the exact chat that took place.

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However, if one was to use an auto response so that each IM conversation began with a statement  that said something like;

"by continuing this conversation you are agreing that you have read and understand the Terms of Service in regards to the disclosure of this IM conversation and it's contents, and furthermore consent to my disclosure if this conversation"

Couldn't continuing a conversation after a direct statement like that be considered consent?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Frankly, i'd be amazed if anyone chose to continue a conversation with you after they read the above.  I certainly wouldn't.  And i don't think you can simply assume consent using something like the clause you just quoted.  Consent has to be explicit. 

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It could be, but when I asked a linden about it I didn't get a straight answer. So I guess if somoene wanted to push it you might get in trouble for it. With LL you just never really know. I have seen people get banned for some pretty dumb stuff, and others that are abviously trouble makers with many complaints some manage to stay on the grid.

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I'll echo what others are saying. A disclaimer, no matter where you put it, isn't consent. Even if it's your autoresponse. Consent has to be "I agree" or "I consent" or "I give you permission", etc.

This comparison is used a lot... Police pull you over for speeding, and you say "If you continue talking to me, that automatically waives the speeding fine"... Sounds even dumber in that context, doesn't it?

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What I see most often is some (usually belligerant) warning that someone is logging IMs and by IMing, someone is giving consent for their IMs to be logged.  Eek!

Um, it's a checkbox. In prefs. Might as well announce that Atmospheric Shaders are on.

 

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Most of the time I've observed that the logging warning is in conjunction with the (usually even more belligerent) "I can do what I want with them" warning. Who cares? Anyone can do what they want with them. Everyone knows logs can be easily doctored and unless you receive one from someone that you can trust to tell you the truth in the first place, they mean little to nothing.

I personally love seeing someone with this type of disclaimer, saves me the trouble of actually interacting with them to find out they are just drama junkies... which is what they should be warning people about in the first place.

"By talking to me in private you agree to be sucked into the drama laden vortex that is my Second Life."

That has a nice ring to it, don't ya think?

...Dres

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I just reply to a similar topic about this, but well this is a bit different.

Disclosure without consent, without actually typing it into the text box, and all parties agree to it within the Second Life Service, such as SL Forums, SL Blogs, & in Second Life is illegal under the Community Standards/TOS of SL, however outside Second Life, there isn't really much Linden Lab service there isn't much LL can do about it as they can't tell which person posted it anyways, the only thing you can do from there is ask the website moderator which hosts the site to remove, or edit it, or call for legal help if it is that much of an issue.

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Dresden Ceriano wrote:

 

"By talking to me in private you agree to be sucked into the drama laden vortex that is my Second Life."


Nicely put.  But the interesting thing is that when ppl come into the store with this kind of thing or really awful, almost comically belligerant and threatening profiles, and I happen to talk with them, they are just sweet as can be.

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Actually (and I am dropping this in reply to this person for a reason) such a disclaimer is PERFECTLY legal. Online conversations are covered by your state/province's laws concerning the recording and subsequent use of telephone/media conversations.

While Linden Lab will enforce their ToS within their own service, there isn't a single thing they can do outside of their servers .... and they know this. Their ToS section concerning disclosure and the sharing of logged messages (which, incidentally, is already rendered partially void simply due to the fact that the standard client program can log local chat and IMs) is little more than a misleading bit of jargon which often results in responses like the one to which this very post of mine responds to.

Like it or not, most of the US is comprised of single party consent states. Only one person in a conversation needs to give their consent to legally allow them to "record" and do whatever they please with the conversation (within reason).

To sum this up? Are the disclaimers legal? Why yes, yes they are. Do they circumvent the ToS? No - no they do not. Can someone log you and then share the log over other web sites/message systems? Yes - yes they can.

By the by? Those of you making the claim that those who put such a disclaimer in their profiles are large sources of drama? Yeah, hate to break it to you but it is more often those who bleat about privacy and who go around reporting people if they even suspect that a conversation was shared with another person that are the largest drama sources. I speak from experience on this one. 

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For one I didn't say anything about "legal" I said valid. And I did address the fact that they can be shared on other places other than LL websites, or websites that specifically prohibit it. It is in no way illegal, in the sense you can be prosecuted for it. What it is is against the rules of that particular company so you are subject to ban or whatever penalties they want give you. I could do the same with a blog. If I made the blog or website I could say sharing IMs or private converstations from my website or any other online game is not condoned. Doesn't make illegal, just means if i catch you doing it I can kick you from my site.

Keep in mind that remote monitoring could be a legal issue though. Since in the us in order to tape a phone conversation the other person needs to know. Unless that tap was placed by the phone company or the authorities. Again it would be a crime, its simply not admissible as evidence. You don't actually need the permission, you just need to let them know. LIke if you called me and I were going to record it, I would have tell you I am going to record the conversation. You can either hang up, watch what you say closer or not worry about it. Same in sl, you can remotely monitor conversations as long as you place signs out in plain view that you are doing it. Doing it secretely is what gets you in trouble.

I think were people get these discliamers idea is from calling service centers and hearing the message "your call may be monitored or recorded for the purpose of quality control" or something to that effect.

Which is why we do it. Not all people that have that in their profile or log conversations are doing it for drama. In our case we are doing it for customer service reasons or to settle a dispute betweena customer and a staff member. Two instances would be: 

You IM a staff member with a tech question for support on one of our products. That particular person doesn't have the answer or can't help, they forward you to me or someone else. Its much easier to send me the name of the person and the chat log then I can contact them to help them out. Having the previous information and conversation lets me help you faster than having to go through the whole thing again. Be honest, how annoying is it when you call for support, get transfered and the next person asks you the same exact info all over again?

Another scenerio would be if someone on the sim threatened or harrassed a staff member or customer. I need to see what happened in order to take the correct action. It lets me decide if they were provoked, or possibly missunderstood and whether I should try to solve the issue or just ban them.

We don't collect information just so we can create drama and pass notecards around about people. Believe me we have better things to do. At least I know me and the owner do. Handling things like this and reading notecards and chat logs takes away from the time we would spend creating new products or helping other customers. So it is not something we do just to pass the time.

I myself don't even have my viewer set to record chat logs or IMs. Just less crap that gets written to my hard drive.

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Yep, sorry, no.

In this case Validity is determined by legality. The disclaimer is perfectly legal (IE, valid). What is invalid (in terms of the SL ToS) is the act of sharing the generated logs with anyone else without expressly written permission. A "disclaimer" to the contrary would thus be invalid within LL's servers.

Not trying to be an arse here but I wanted tl clear that bit of miscommunication up. On this topic, validity and legality are one and the same so far as I am concerned as it's pretty hard to enforce a "valid", illegal policy concerning specific topics/actions.

You missed a case use for message logging by the by - and it is, by sar, the most general use: Making bloody sure one doesn't get asked a question concerning a bit of conversation which happened months ago and having to try and remember said conversation.

By the by - and once again, not trying to be an arse here: The only log file that could possibly be considered true clutter is the local chat log. That one gets pretty big, pretty quickly for the more social users. Other than that, the logs rarely get bigger than 5 megs. That is not exactly "clutter". 

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Void, I doubt that the fear of libel suits is the reason for the prohibition in the ToS. I imagine there are many, many instances of libel occuring daily through the medium of local/nearby chat.

The disclaimers are ineffective. However, the prohibition on sharing chat logs appears to be breached so often that it seems pretty ineffective too.

Nobody has ever provided me with a good reason why someone sending lewd and offensive IMs to a stranger should have any legitimate expectation that those messages will not be dislcosed to others.

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Solar Legion wrote:

Yeah, hate to break it to you but it is more often those who bleat about privacy and who go around reporting people if they even
suspect
that a conversation was shared with another person that are the largest drama sources. I speak from experience on this one. 

Actually no, you're talking about the extreme other side of the drama continuum. To infer that those types trump the other extreme side of it seems to me a bit disingenuous. Both are evacuation worthy for sure and if the two should ever meet, watch out... the ensuing dramacane can easily reach level 5, reeking havoc on all who are unfortunate enough to get caught in it.

Besides that, I have to wonder why some people feel it necessary to use phrases such as "bleat about privacy" as if to belittle people that have concerns about their private conversations being displayed for all to see. Wanting your private conversations to remain private does not automatically mean they contain any sort of sinister element, though I've seen my fair share of that kind of thinking. Not to say that that is what you were insinuating in this particular context, just a thought really.

...Dres

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I'm with Dres on this one. A private conversation is private. That's a basic respect thing. You tell someone something in confidence, you should be able to expect it to stay between just the two of you.

And LL's rules back that up, at least everywhere that they can enforce those rules. Kudos to them for doing it.

I for one, will happily AR someone, disclaimer or not, if they take our conversation, put it in a notecard, and pass it around, and I get wind that that's happening.

Is the disclamer legal? Sure. Will that save them from a suspension from SL? Nope.

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not Libel suits in general, just ones that might entangle LL.... by stating that it is not allowed within their service, and providing means for reporting it and repercussions for violating it, LL protects themselves from any culpability. in the general it's not really necessary, but in the specific, they could be targeted civilly otherwise if, for instance, someone with the means and professional reputation were to pursue such a suit.... and being as LL is the involved party with the most likely deepest pockets, it's a good piece of standard language to protect themselves.

that said, it should go without saying that it only applies within their service which is what Solar is pointing out. However, realistically, such disclaimers are redundant for that case since there is no realistic expectation of privacy or legal onus to provide it in general (dr/patient, lawyer/client, clergy/layman, and similar exceptions notwithstanding), which is noted in the corporate privacy policy for people that may not have realized it to begin with.

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