KRYPTON RADIO

Modular Systems to Shut Down

by Kalel Venkman

In a surprise posting earlier today on the Modular Systems blog site, Arabella Steadham delivered the almost inevitable message that Modular Systems would be ceasing operations effective immediately.  Modular Systems was the creator of the popular Emerald client (originally called the “GreenLife” client), used by approximately one quarter of the users of the Second Life 3D content and chat environment owned and operated by Linden Lab.

The closure was forced by Linden Lab after the the use of the Emerald client in a DDoS attack (a “distributed denial of service” attack) on a web server owned by Hazim Gazov.  Gazov, a founding member of the now-banned Woodbury University group, had devoted a significant portion of his web site to the creation of  his own client for the purposes of evading bans and illegal copying of content on the Second Life platform.  It was he who purportedly had hacked his way into one of the accounts on the Modular Systems database server in May of this year, exposing functional details of a controversial security project being created by Fractured Crystal, one of the lead developers.

It is believed that Fractured Crystal was motivated to perpetrate the DDoS attack in response to the break in.  Once Linden Lab confronted Modular Systems on the DDoS attack, Modular Systems asked for and received Fractured Crystal’s resignation.  However, since Modular Systems is not a true company but instead a loose association of like-minded individuals, it is unclear as to what the resignation really means in practical terms.

Modular Systems’ reputation had been suffering for months, amid allegations that some of its code libraries had been adulterated so as to procure and convey information about Emerald users via encoding of information in images used by the client during operation.

Shortly after the initial announcement, other posts appeared on a blog site belonging to Jessica Lyon, also of Modular Systems.  In them, she stated that Linden Lab was willing to reinstate Emerald’s status on the Third Party Viewer list if three key members of the Modular Systems development staff were dismissed: Lonely Bluebird (also known as Phox), Skills Hak and Discrete Dreamscape.

The development servers were owned by Lonely Bluebird, and ultimately he removed the ability of the rest of the team to access it.  Modular Systems claimed that this made development of Emerald without his participation impossible, despite the fact that the code repositories are kept on Google’s “GoogleCode” system and visible to anyone.

Linden Lab had given Modular Systems until Friday, September 3, 2010 to comply with a lengthy list of conditions before Third Party Viewer status could be restored to Emerald.  On Friday, if the conditions are not met, Linden Lab will begin considering what it will take to block Emerald from being used in conjunction with the Second Life platform.

Alternatives to Emerald are, in the meantime, strongly suggested.  The official viewers from Linden Lab itself are obvious choices.  Linden Lab supplies a list of approved third party viewers which may also be used in conjunction with Second Life.

Update

September 3, 2010

The question of how Modular Systems would recover from its troubles seems to have been resolved in the creation of a new programming team by Jessica Lyons, gathering together many of the developers from the old Emerald project and relaunching it as the “Phoenix Viewer”.  The participants in the original Emerald development program to whom Linden Lab had objected are noticeably absent from the new lineup.

The lead developers for the new viewer are Dimentox Travanti, LordGregGreg Back, Techwolf Lupindo, and Tonya Souther.  LordGregGreg Back had resigned from the Emerald development team on August 14 of this year.

Links

• Jessica Lyon’s WordPress Blog
• LordGregGreg Back’s WordPress Blog
• Arabella Steadham’s post on the Modular Systems blog
• New World News: Emerald Removed from TPV List
• Linden Lab’s Third Party Viewer List
• The Phoenix Viewer

Krypton Radio’s Exclusive Interview with the Lead Designer of “Starlight”

by Kalel Venkman

An Editorial

By ZenMondo Wormser

There seems to be more rumor than facts floating around the grid about the Justice League Unlimited, a public service organization made up of members who dress up like comic book superheroes. This short piece is to address some of those perceptions and to shed light on how we actually do things. Though our mission includes education and charity work, this essay will concentrate on what is the most public
face of the JLU, peacekeeping.

Part the first: The situation we find ourselves in.

There are two documents that are the “law of the land” for conduct in the virtual world of Second Life. These are the Community Standards (CS) and the Terms of Service (TOS). Some TOS violations Linden Lab can detect by a technical means, but most of these are technology based and not necessarily related to in-world conduct.

Linden Labs does not have an in world police force to patrol the grid looking for TOS and CS violations, there is no “Officer Linden”. What the Lab has chosen to do is rely on the community of users to spot infractions of the TOS and CS and file Abuse Reports (AR) which then can be investigated by Lindens on the Resident Experience Support Inworld (RESI) team. Linden Lab has, wrongfully or not,  put the burden of discovering violations of the rules to the residents of Second Life.

Part the Second: Some are in it for the lulz.

Troll. Goon. Griefer. The topic of articles in Wired Magazine, and the main reason an abuse report system is there in the first place. These characters don’t have a good day until they upset yours. They will assure you that you are taking  Second Life “too seriously” and just need to relax. Their idea of pointing out this philosophy is to illicit an (usually negative) emotional reaction, a practice known as “trolling”. If you react, they “win” and they laugh about it or in their own term “get the lulz”.

On internet forums, this is usually done with the art or conversation or the posting of captioned photographs. In the virtual world of Second Life, they more often resort to a more visceral (yet still virtual) practice known as “griefing”. Griefing in short is any action taken to lessen the enjoyment of others, that is “causing grief”. In Second Life, this often takes the form of an “attack” which limits one’s ability to use Second Life by preventing you from moving (“caging”) from talking (“chat spammers”), hearing in world sounds (“sound spammers”), or viewing the environment around you (“particle spammers”). Other types of attacks can result in filling up a region with so many objects that moving or building becomes impossible (“replicators”) or methods for crashing a region logging everyone out, or crashing clients so that you are forcibly logged out of second life. A third type attack is a combination of the above designed to take up simulator resources and lag the sim, so that the use of the region becomes so slow so as to be impossible to use in any meaningful manner.

To create these types of attacks a certain level of technical acumen is required, but to use such attacks only the basest of technical skills are required – that is just the knowledge of how to use the Second Life client to move from place to place and to receive objects into and rez them from the inventory window. Soon griefers organized and developed networks and groups within Second Life to coordinate attacks and set up “weapon caches” where one could be outfitted with equipment that can be used in griefing incidents or the term the griefers use, “raids”.

Part the Third: Enter the Justice League.

It is for others to give the history of the founding of the League, I wasn’t there. I will tell you the situation we find ourselves in currently.

As I said in part the first, it is up to residents to discover and report CS and TOS violations, and as I explained in part the second, there are those who’s main interest in logging into Second Life is to break the rules. There needs to be a third part, those that will stand up and do what Linden Lab is not willing or able to do: actively patrol “trouble areas” and report CS and TOS violations in a clear, organized manner.

First, something the JLU is NOT. We are not vigilantes. We have no police powers. We do not act like law enforcement. We do not detain, arrest, or otherwise hinder those breaking the rules. We merely observe and report. We do nothing that no other resident of Second Life can’t do themselves. We are less a vigilante organization and more of a Neighborhood Watch. We have no powers to ban other avatars, and have no formal arrangement with Linden Lab.

In Linden Lab’s model I can only guess what they expected. They may have expected griefing to be targeted towards individuals who then would submit abuse reports. Large scale attacks would be seen by many and then reported by many. In practice, this does not seem to happen. Either most residents don’t care about reporting abuse, or more likely most residents don’t know how to report abuse. This is where the Justice League steps in.

Continue reading The Justice League: Why we do what we do, and how we do it.

Mark Kingdon (“M Linden”) Steps Down

by Kalel Venkman

Posted this morning on the Second Life official blog was a message from Philip Rosedale, who returns as CEO of Linden Lab, creator of the popular online MMO called Second Life.  Rosedale is assuming the role of temporary CEO while a new more permanent choice for the position can be found.  Mark Kingdon is stepping down.

Second Life’s 7th Birthday celebration is currently underway in-world.  Kingdon was supposed to deliver a keynote address on Saturday, but failed to appear.  Rosedale filled in for him, repeating his own speech from the same morning and offering, in part, an apology for the lack of performance and responsiveness from the Linden Lab support and development teams.  Rosedale views the recent 30% staff cuts as changes that were unfortunate, but necessary.   In his remarks, Rosedale commented that lack of attentiveness to development and socio-economic issues had been one of Linden Lab’s recent failings and that they were working to correct these issues.

Public reaction to the news of the cuts had resulted in a temporary spike of the dollar against the Linden, seeing the value of the Linden drop to a four year low of about $300L per US dollar.  Linden Lab was quick to buy back enough Lindens to stabilize the in-world economy, noted for being the largest stable virtual economy in the world. Last April  Linden Lab reported their best first quarter in their history, with over $160M in user transactions in-world.

Here are Mr. Rosedale’s comments as posted on the Second Life blog: