Property Snatched by Linden Lab
Posted by Shaun Altman Thu, 24 Jan 2008 23:29:00 GMT
Linden Lab seems to have sent us another reminder recently that Second Life may have entered a whole new era. This is not the kind of era that we all hope for, such as for example, an era of economic rebound. Instead, it seems to be an era of, among other things, land seizure and account banning conducted by Linden Lab, based on what your powerful well-connected neighbor thinks of you and/or what you've built next-door.
Let me start this article off by saying that I'm not generally one to be critical of Linden Lab, especially in public. I love Second Life, and I truly believe that this type of technology holds a lot of promise for the future in a variety of areas. I also feel that generally speaking, there is no better qualified group of individuals on the planet to usher us into this new technological era than the folks at Linden Lab.
With that said, the events that I've seen occur recently leave me with a feeling of deep concern for what the future of Second Life may be like, and cause me to wonder if I'll even want to participate in that future. Let me share the most recent series of these events with you to the extent that I can recall them.
A couple of nights ago, someone sent me an instant message to tell me about a new build in the Furness region of Second Life. Furness is an un-zoned mainland region which the avatar Prokofy Neva owns a lot of land in and around. I learned that what seems to be a group of students belonging to a university, had begun construction of a tower on some land that one of them had purchased in the region. I knew that Prokofy Neva generally rented virtual houses in this area of the grid, and was curious about what effect a tower may have on the landscape, so I teleported over to Furness to check it out.
When I arrived, I found the avatar IntLibber Brautigan, the avatar Prokofy Neva, a few other avatars who's names I can't recall, and indeed, a partially constructed tower. It seemed to be shaping up to be a very nice tower, which while large, may have added a lot of value to the area. There was also signage present, facing a nearby road, which indicated that this land was to be the future home of Woodbury University in Second Life.
I was pretty busy at the time, so after having a look around the area, I wished the avatars good luck with their school project and teleported back to my home location. The next day, I received a teleport spam from Prokofy Neva, inviting me to the Furness region, with no accompanying instant message. I was still pretty busy, but being ever-curious about what someone as dynamic as Prokofy Neva is up to in Second Life, I decided to accept the teleport invitation.
When I arrived, Prokofy asked me if I remembered what was on the lot we were next to. Indeed, next to us was an empty lot where the tower belonging to the university students stood the night before, but it was no longer there. A closer examination revealed the land to now be owned by Governor Linden.
Prokofy Neva went on to inform me that the avatar who purchased this land had been banned from Second Life, after the seizure of the avatar's property (land) by Linden Lab. He then asked me a very chilling question. I didn't log it, so I can't quote it verbatim, but it was directly along the lines of, "Do you see what I can get done if I want to?".
This event is alarming mostly because when I viewed the build prior to it, there didn't seem to be anything present which violated the rules of Second Life. Prokofy Neva often theorizes about the existence of a secretive and elite cabal of Second Life residents, known as the "Feted Inner Core", or "FIC" for short. According to Prokofy Neva, this is a group of residents who are well-connected with Linden Lab, and receive special favors and/or special treatment within Second Life as a result of those connections.
Prokofy Neva also speculates often in public about which Second Life residents may or may not be members of this shadowy organization. I know a lot of people on this list, and because I've never witnessed an event related to one of them that I could describe beyond a reasonable doubt as special treatment, I've never really bought into the notion of "a FIC" controlling the destiny of Second Life. My eyes have been opened on this issue in a most surprising way though.
If these events took place as I understand them, it seems to me that in fact "a FIC" may be very much alive and well within the grid, and Prokofy Neva may be its chairman. I don't know about you, but personally, I know of no other avatar who can summon some friends with the last name of Linden, and say to them, "I don't like this build. Snatch the land from the person who paid for it, remove the build, and ban the land owner from the game".
In my view, these events serve to highlight a concern that I've felt building in the community for quite a while. I joined Second Life in 2004, which makes me a fairly old avatar by today's standards. Back then, Linden Lab often told us that we were building a world. In fact, the vision that they sold to me, which has kept me so passionately engaged through both good and bad times, was "Your world, your imagination".
Alarming events like these, which are happening often in Second Life's more recent history, seem to indicate that Linden Lab may have lost its way somewhere along the road. I worry that they may have forgotten about why we're all here and why we all invest so much time, emotion, money and expertise into building this brave new world, which they once proudly told us was forged by our imaginations. It appears that Linden Lab may have begun paving a NEW road, comprised of censorship, corporate sanitization, and pandering to the whimsical desires of special interests such as real-world mega-corps and very large land holders like Prokofy Neva, at the expense of the community as a whole.
This is a road that doesn't hold much interest for me as a resident of Second Life. It is my sincere hope that Linden Lab will find its way once again, and return to its roots as true innovators in the fields of communication, collaboration, experimentation and free expression, rather than continuing to evolve into just another sad reminder of the power that the status quo holds over all of us.
I agree 100% Shaun. People like Prok, Angel, Kalel, have amassed power in SL and are not afraid to use it in as corrupt a manner as possible to suit their whims, usually completely without evidence to support whatever flimsy claims they make about those they accuse.
Oh, one more thing: when I was there, I did see ONE ToS violation on the parcel: It was a prim overhanging into the parcel from one owed by Prokofy, the prim was owned by Prokofy, and I advised the students to AR her. They said they would rather not as they wanted to demonstrate that they were good neighbors. They thought taking the higher road would reward them, but as with anything involving Prokofy, things were dragged down to the lowest level, and they got burned. Way to go, Prok, teaching students how to be good citizens.
I put quite some effort into building that tower. Now it's in my inventory in several pieces.
The land was purchased for 250USD, and was in our hands for barely 24 hours.
At present I believe that LL suspects that landowner was an alt of Tizzers Foxchase - which I can assure you he is not.
The land now resides in the hands of Agent Linden, rather than Governor Linden, so I hope that some form of investigation is pending - as right now, Woodbury University has been quite literally robbed.
Personally, I doubt Prokofy's whining had much of anything to do with it.
This isn't a group of "students," they are an organized conspiracy of deliberate griefers and vandalizers, and I can see that finally, after more than a year of abuse-reporting this gang of people, the Lindens have had enough and banned their ringleader and seized property that they used for a base to harass others.
There's nothing innocent or legitimate about a group of repeat-offenders, some of whose members have been perma-banned, moving into an area and buying a very overpriced piece of land to deliberately goad and stalk someone they've victimized for a very long time, in a very well-documented way. By itself, a land purchase by a group that perhaps no one finds conspiratorial or criminal if they don't watch it over time may not be a TOS offense by itself.
But taken together with a pattern of harassment over a long enough time, with enough victims (and I am far from the only one), it constitutes a profile and the Lindens can act.
Shaun knows perfectly well if his beloved "students" need a "university," they could buy land in far less laggy and congested commercial area in new class 5 sims at a half the price -- he himself commented on the lag.
I urged in my abuse reports about this group after they moved into Furness that the Lindens should pay particular attention to all the operations of these avatars and the date and time of the sim crash logs.
A tiny prim encroachment hardly stands as anything significant on the real ledger with this group of people, whose names are perfectly known to Shaun. I've been abuse-reporting them for more than a year, as this same gang keeps harassing my tenants, crashing my sims, and unleashing particle blasts.
Making an ugly build isn't a TOS offense and I'd hardly be able to file one legitimately, let alone expect the Lindens to act on it. But stalking somebody into the area where they own a lot of land, deliberately and provocatively buying property to mount a tower to harass them and start the usual menu of griefing -- that may well have been a factor for Lindens, who had earlier seized Woodbury University's island.
I'm not sure I have the log of my convo either, I'll check, but what I said was "See what I can get done when I have to" -- and this comes from months and months and months of observing and carefully abuse reporting every single thing that these people do -- finally it paid off.
The Lindens are finally turning a corner on griefing, and not buying the Herald-pumped-up Eddie-Haskell sort of constant denial of what goes on.
Shaun himself has been subject to these same brutal attacks lately, but he mistakenly thinks it's some other group, and that his new body Windowclick Klaar is somehow "good" and "not a griefer" though he has constantly harassed me and my tenants for months and months, deliberately trespassing to make a nuisance of himself and joining my open group just to be annoying and intimidating, though they are not tenants.
Intlibber has hired some of the people in these griefing groups to settle scores with people he doesn't like.
I suspect Shaun's primary motivation for writing this very partially reported blog has to do with my increasingly pointed questions lately asking where the money has gone from investors in Cyberland.
I'll be posting my blog about this incident shortly.
FYI:
Dear Dr. Rosen,
I'm writing to you with profound concern, as you may be in a position to exercise some supervisory function over Dr. Edward Clift and the students of the Communications Department at Woodbury University as to their misbehaviour in the virtual world of Second Life (www.secondlife.com)
Once again, Woodbury University is in the SL blogosphere over antics being perpetrated in the online virtual world of Second Life. And once again, the SL Herald and other sources are printing deliberately false statements about the antics of these students as part of their ongoing support for "griefing," or malicious behaviour targeted against other residents of Second Life.
http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2008/01/lindens-finally.html http://foo.secondlifeherald.com/slh/2008/01/fic-tables-turn.html http://www.shaunaltman.com/articles/2008/01/24/property-snatched-by-linden-lab
On January 23, I was very disturbed to see that the account claimed to be used by Dr. Clift, "MC Fizgig" was used to purchase virtual property next to my property in SL, at a site that had been frequently targeted by the griefing group calling itself Woodbury. It was a deliberately provocative act in order to stalk and harass me, consistent with a very long-term pattern of trespassing and vandalism perpetrated by Woodbury "students" in SL for more than a year.
This Woodbury group, which contains some persons now permanently banned from Second Life for harassing me and other residents (the account named Tizzers Foxchase and Hazim Gazov), has frequently disturbed the peace, trespassed, insulted, maliciously taunted, littered, released particles, and crashed the simulators, or servers deliberately in SL. I've filed countless abuse reports on them.
I have also spent more than a year trying to get to the bottom of the story of why a seemingly respected university such as Woodbury would be involved in this malicious form of play which in fact leads to property damage involving real money because of the sim-crashing and intimidation of people in SL.
As a number of the blogs are making false statements about my supposed "inside connections" to "get this account banned," I thought it was important to let you know that I made a perfectly legitimate, appropriate and public filing against "MC Fizgig" using the regular Abuse Report system within SL, based on a pattern of stalking and harassment by his group for more than a year. Evidently Linden Lab investigated this report, and apparently other information it had, and as far as I can tell, acted properly in closing this account and seizing the virtual land (server space rented).
As it may well be possible that these accounts and the name of Woodbury are being used without your knowledge or consent, or there might be some other fraud involved here, I thought I'd bring this latest incident to your attention and urge you to investigate.
Having seen Dr. Clift's interviews to the Herald, I know he is an interested and highly biased party in this discussion, but he also may be unaware of the actual behaviour of the people in his group in SL currently.
Prokofy Neva (Catherine A. Fitzpatrick)
"I urged in my abuse reports about this group after they moved into Furness that the Lindens should pay particular attention to all the operations of these avatars and the date and time of the sim crash logs."
That would be a very valid point - IF we had actually crashed any of the sims even once.
As I have said, it seems to me that LL suspect the MC Fizgig account is an alt of Tizzers.
Dr. Clift is most certainly NOT Tizzers.
On another note, Prokofy, why do you feel the need to complain on your blog when you are banned from commenting on when you yourself ban me and many others from your own?
I don't really have much against you, other than that I find you somewhat Ostrich-like in that you hold your head up high, stick your neck out to voice your opinions, and then bury your head in the sand and ignore all other views.
How about we actually talk for once?
I have used my forum pen-name as I fear percecution at the hands of these "in with the Linden Despots" however an event happened to me in SL completely independantly to the above event but which provides further evidence to support what Shaun is saying.
A few weeks ago I bought a small mainland parcel, and began building my not too outlandish structure. Within 5 minutes of setting up, and with my building definately within the boundaries of my land, my avatar was suspended for 24 hours on "land encrouchment" charges.
It normally takes 5 weeks to get any complaint responded to by a Linden- so for this to have happened within 5 minutes must have been a Linden alt abusing her power.
When I got back - I moved up to a skybox, placing my build well within the limits and then using the object position feature to shift it up at 700m whilst making sure I was on my parcel, which I checked using the \ objects on land feature.
Within 2 days- my account was again suspended- again for "encrouchment".
I therefore sold the land at great loss and moved elsewhere.
An examination of the neighbouring land showed that one of my neibours had some very cutting edge features in the sky- and obviously had been in the game for a long time- and Ive put it down to a Lindens SL pleasure alt abusing their powers to choose their neibours.
This is definately going on.