January 2008

I did not really wish to make a fuss, or give the person concerned any more publicity than she deserves, but I think that it is reasonable to mention in the context of my previous entry regarding the Griefbuild Digest Flickr group that I have now been the victim of what is known as a “DMCA Takedown Notice” regarding some pictures of advertising builds by a Ms Cytherea Eagle. Only, well, I have been the victim, but almost entirely silently.

Having posted a piece on the Forums informing people of the existence of the group, I received a comedy legal threat on the matter from Ms Eagle, but I ignored that, given that no lawyer not drunken, drugged or disbarred would ever consider this anything but “fair use”. If it was not for Ms Wildefire Walcott’s kind mention in the Forums that she was unable to see anything owned by Ms Eagle in the group, I would have known nothing.

What has apparently happened - and I am extrapolating here, as I have been unable to obtain the actual details from Flickr, though it seems very likely - is that a DMCA notice was filed by Ms Eagle to Flickr alleging copyright infringement, and the company is then obliged to remove the article automatically.

What is then supposed to happen is that they tell the person whose pictures were removed (i.e. myself) in order that that person may file a DMCA counter-notice, and have the pictures replaced. And anything further must be decided by legal action, and I am, if not happy with that, at least confident that it holds no real danger for me, certainly given that (a) this really is the most obvious case of fair use and (b) I live in another country in any case.

Flickr did not do this. I am not sure when they removed the pictures originally, but after seeing Ms Walcott’s post I asked them for clarification on the 15th of January, received a rapid response saying that yes, the images “were removed for Copyright infringement” and that they would try to find out what had happened. Since then I have not been further informed.

As said I don’t really like to cause a fuss on my own account but given that the matter has been mentioned by Mr Rik Riel, Mr Prokofy Neva and Mr Hamlet Au already, I thought it a good idea to write a small something. I am quite capable of reposting the pictures concerned elsewhere of course, but what I am trying to do is get Flickr to reinstate the original pictures, to demonstrate that the DMCA cannot simply be used to remove anything that one doesn’t like. (I might add that Mr Riel posted a picture of the “advertisement” himself, if you wish to see it, and it can be found at Foxboro 102,39 should you wish to see it in person and, who knows, take a picture of your own.)

Should there be any further developments I will of course write here, and I hope that there will be soon. As for the morals displayed by Ms Eagle in both her business practices upon the Grid and her part in this matter, I shall say nothing and leave the reader to draw their own conclusions. (With a touch of irony I did note at the time that, despite their inherent nature and deliberately-lagging temp-rezzing behaviour, they were far less ugly than all of the other signs to be found in the region. Beauty is clearly prim-deep.)

P.S. As a final note, should there not be sufficient Links for a reader to Follow, above, there is also a thread in the Flickr forums on the matter.

I recently rediscovered a Flickr group that I created some time ago for the posting of pictures of the sort of harassing, usually advertising, builds that plague the Mainland and cause all sorts of heated discussion on the Official Forums. Given that I spent a little while writing a Description that supposedly sums up its nature and purpose, I shall simply repost it here:

Griefing builds in Second Life, designed to make neighbours give up and move elsewhere or give up and buy the plot to get rid of the horrible spinning thing. Usually advertising, though not always.

All screenshots should include location (doesn’t have to be exact, as long as somebody could find the plot again) and name of the item’s owner, ideally gained by taking a screenshot that includes the Edit window. This is to provide an undeniable record of the activity, though if it is a series of different pictures of the same piece of ad griefing, only one piece of evidence is required.

(You can use the PrintScreen button in Windows, or Shift+Cmd+4 on a Mac to include parts of the Second Life UI, or some other screenshot program. I use SnapzProX myself, and if you have FRAPS installed, that should work too.)

Due to the nature of the ad/griefing builds posted here, this can’t help but be an 18+ group, even if the actual content on them is at about a 14-year-old level of sophistication.

Lastly - this isn’t a group for just any ugly build. (One could find endless pictures from SL.) It is just for pictures of builds which are clearly being used for unwelcome advertising, to bring down land prices, force people to sell, annoy them enough that they buy the land, or just by cretinous advertising networks who don’t care how much they annoy neighbours. Pretty much anything that is on a 16m2 plot that’s been set for sale is going to fit in, I would think. Oh, and the ads should be long-term ones, not just temporary griefing objects left on somebody else’s land - while those are horrible enough, they don’t have the same motivations.

One can find the group at:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/slgriefbuild/

Please do join and post any horrible examples you wish to! As noted, the naming of names is strongly encouraged - if the owner disagrees that their build constitutes ad griefing or land spam, well, the evidence is there for anyone to inspect, and onlookers can decide for themselves.

I suspect that there might be quite some Drama involved should this become a popular group, but at the least, it will serve some purpose in cataloguing the dizzying variety of different aliases used by these scoundrels. If one sees one of the names mentioned around the Grid, and agrees that their build is indeed a griefing one, do not sell to or deal with that person or their group! And most certainly, do not sell them land, if that was not obvious.

I have been attempting to put together an entry on the recent Banking Regulational Activity from the Lab, but it is a complex issue - not “complex” in the fence-sitting, “on the one hand, on the other hand” way, but complex in that it takes quite a bit of work to say precisely what one means without simplifying economic issues in the way that the Toy Capitalists themselves do. Ad griefers, land spammers, polluters of the visual space, though, there is very little to be said apart from “these are the filthy swine concerned, avoid them at all costs and don’t give them any money”. It is certainly not worth bothering to reason with them, as almost universally they are proud of the fact that they can carry on their “business” safe in the knowledge that they are defended by physical law here, when in the Other World they would have their rubbish torn down in the middle of the night by outraged neighbours at the very least. There is little that one can do at the moment upon the Grid, but what can be done should.

My commentary regarding Banking shall be simply the following cheap piece of graffiti:

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As a further note: a further entry on certain pictures having been Removed can be found here.

Far be it for me to make any sort of appalling “new year new product” sort of references, particularly given that there is no such thing, to be quite frank, as a “new” product from Ordinal Enterprises - every piece of frippery that you see emerging has usually been loitering unreleased in my mind and inventory for months and occasionally, for instance in the case of the Swordstick, for over a year. Though never over two years, I believe.

An Idea bubbles to the surface of the peculiar caffeinated swamp of my mind, there is a brief flurry of activity, it approaches finality: and then something or other intervenes, or I spend several months changing the colour of a texture between two imperceptibly different shades, or I set myself a necessary task for its improvement before release which I clearly do not have the time to do and thus can avoid without personal guilt (unless I look too hard into my own motivations). I am led to believe that I am not the only Artisan with these Issues, and I am engaging on a Scientific Regimen of Mental Exercise in an attempt to restrict it in the Future, or at least I will be once I create the proper Folder Structure to file my exercise notes in.

In the meantime, I do actually have a product that I would like to announce - the Ordinal Howdah Pistol - and as is common in this day and age, it has its own Demonstrative Cinema, though I shall place it in the Extended Portion of this journal entry since I dislike the aesthetic effect of numerous of the things on my Front Page.

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