Spotty Takedown Panics Virtual Business Owners

by Gene Turnbow

Second Life vendors earn unwanted attention from Marvel Comics for recreations of characters like these.

Last week vendors using the online marketplace for the popular MMO Second Life were treated to a number of takedown notices from Marvel Comics for offering avatars for sale that resembled characters from Marvel Comics.  Second Life uses a web-based system which they own and operate to enable users of their service to purchase virtual goods, buildings, room furnishings and custom avatars for use inside the virtual environment.  In all, between six and twelve vendors were affected (the exact number of vendors or items involved isn’t known and was not announced).  Not all items by all vendors were identified for removal.

This is not the first time Second Life has been raided by entertainment companies seeking to protect their trademarks.

• In April of 2009, the estate of Frank Herbert, author of the Dune series of science fiction novels ordered that all Dune-related materials be removed from Second Life over a two day period.  The Dune roleplayers simply renamed everything and kept going.  Much the same thing happened with the estate of J.K. Rowling regarding Harry Potter themed sims in 2008 – the sims with offending names were removed.
• On Thanksgiving Day of 2010, Universal City Studios ordered Linden Research, creators and operators of the popular online community, to remove any and all  to remove any and all intellectual content  relating to ‘Battlestar Galactica’  from its grid.  Second Life players complied (having been given little choice) – regions and products named for or presenting items from Battlestar Galactica were removed.
• On August 19, 2011, in a sobering development for fan creators, Linden Lab  removed Power Rangers merchandise from the Angel Grove Mall in Second Life and from the Marketplace Second Life website.

A Patchword Response

In each case, while actions were taken by Linden Lab in response to DMCA takedown requests by the various holders of the intellectual property rights involved, in no case was the removal of materials or content from Second Life particularly comprehensive or thorough.  To understand what happened and why, one needs to understand what the DMCA is and how it works. Here are the mechanics in simple terms:

• An item is identified that potentially violates someone’s copyright.  (In this case it was copyrighted characters.  One cannot copyright clothing, and though what was removed was mostly costumes, it was also technically just digital assets – the appearance of clothing.  And the appearance of an illustrated character can be copyrighted.)
• The owner of the copyright or their representative specifically identifies where the infringing material can be found.  In this case, it was a web site.  The individual URL’s were reported to Linden Lab.
• By law, Linden Lab is then required to take down the offending material, whether or not the copyright claim is valid.  The reason for this is that the infringement cannot simply remain in place until ownership has been proven in a court of law, because this would destroy the timeliness of the remedy and render nonexistent any protections.

After that, surprisingly, usually nothing happens.  And the reason is that the complaint has been made regarding the content of the Second Life Marketplace web site, not the actual virtual products themselves.  Legal aides rarely have the horsepower or graphics support in their office machines to be able to enter an online service such as Second Life with its graphics intensive hardware requirements to be able to go into the virtual world and look around for more things to ticket for removal.  Of course, our examples above are noteworthy because Universal, Saban, the Frank Herbert estate and the J.K. Rowling estate all went in-world and did some pretty massive sweeps, but for every one of these major events, there are a dozen or so smaller ones that nobody ever hears about – because they’re picking out individual items instead of whole virtual islands to clean up.

Don’t Panic

If you are a creator of virtual goods in online services, you needn’t panic.  If you are infringing and you know it, you might want to rethink your business strategy.  If  you believe that what you are making and giving away is Fair Use, you’re most likely right – but be prepared for a takedown notice anyway.  These companies don’t read the fine print, and are big enough not to care.  On the other hand, the ramifications of a takedown notice are pretty simple: the materials in question get taken down, and pretty much that’s all that happens to you.  You’re unlikely to get sued, or fined, or anything else.  The DMCA takedown is the end of the action.

Not all companies are as litigiously minded as Marvel Comics.  DC Comics, for example, is owned by Time Warner, who in turn has a relatively lax attitude about fan recreations of their characters and can’t be bothered with the nickel-and-dime operations inside a virtual world.  A week’s pay for an in-house legal assistant usually exceeds the total profits of an entire year’s work for a virtual business in an MMO such as Second Life, so unless they see something sticking up outside on the internet where they can see it, they generally won’t expend the energy.

Why are they picking on the little guys?  Mostly it’s because they have to.  This seems counter-intuitive, but it’s the way trademark and copyright law both work.  If you own a trademark or copyright, and you see violations of your intellectual property rights and you do nothing about it, you stand to lose the right to defend your own trademarks or copyrights later on when it really counts.  Xerox Corporation failed to do this, and eventually the word ‘xerox’ became a generic synonym for ‘photocopy’. What most think Marvel was doing was going after trademark and copyright violators.  That’s only half right.  They were also protecting their ability to do so later on when it really counts, and they have to make a good faith effort so that they can demonstrate to the courts when the time comes that they actually did.  It’s credibility in the bank.

The bottom line is that if you’re a creator of virtual goods, chances are good you’re not making enough money doing this to really affect a trademark or copyright holder one way or the other. If you’re caught using somebody else’s stuff and distributing it, be prepared for its removal.  On the other hand, getting flattened by the boot of vengeful Galactus is a pretty small probability.

- 30 -

 Links

• Linden Lab Tightens Copyright & Trademark Rules
• Saban Entertainment Cracks Down on Power Rangers Merchandizers in Second Life
• Universal Forces Battlestar Galactica Off Second Life
• Second Life
• Second Life Marketplace

Incoming search terms:

• power rangers background
• power rangers mighty morphin
• power ranger vector mighty morphin
• mighty morphin power rangers masks

	Vagabond “Tony” Carter is back for Season 5 of his popular show Stark Reality! It airs each day at 8AM, 10AM, 4PM and 8PM PST, and features interviews and news about the virtual worlds we inhabit, and how the online community affects the world at large, with special features on the Linden Lab MMO Second Life.. This time we’re going to run the last episode of Season 4 and the first episode of Season 5 back to back – Tony’s doing a tutorial on how to make a scripted disco ball in Second Life, and it’s spread out over these two episodes. This way you’ll get the whole tutorial in one sitting.
	Fanboy ComicsFanboy Comics is excited to bring back its trademark weekly podcast to Krypton Radio and its listeners as an on-air broadcast! Join hosts Bryant Dillon,Barbra Dillon, Sam Rhodes,and Drew Siragusa –and an assortment of special guests –as they discuss the most exciting geek news from the week,compiled from our daily e-newsletter,The Fanboy Scoop. The Fanboy Scoop –Week In Review can be heard on Mondays at 7:00 p.m./PST and Saturdays at 2:00 p.m/PST You can also download the shows as podcasts via the listings below, from their web site, or you can subscribe to them on iTunes!
TV Campfire!	Libya El Amin’s TV Campfire is burning bright and back for the new season! TV Campfire features Libya and her dynamic weekly roundtable discussions of all your favorite shows! Tune in Tuesdays at 7PM, then again on Sundays at 2PM for Libya El-Amin’s TV Campfire.
X Minus One	Tune in Fridays and Saturdays at 9:30PM Pacific time to hear X Minus 1 Travel back in time with X Minus 1, the popularly acclaimed science fiction radio series from the 1950′s. Krypton Radio is presenting these episodes in their original broadcast order, and even running two per week it’ll still take a whole year to air them all! Hear stories by the giants of science fiction converted into radio drama – television of the mind!

We’ve got even more shows in development too – stay tuned to Krypton Radio, and bookmark us, and join us on Facebook. You won’t want to miss a thing!

Incoming search terms:

• power rangers background
• power rangers mighty morphin
• power ranger vector mighty morphin
• mighty morphin power rangers masks

Coming to Second Life this weekend the 2011 MachinExpo, showcasing animated shorts made in Second Life! runs from November 18-20th

Location:  Uscville in Second Life and online at machinima-expo.com

Flier and schedule

Incoming search terms:

• power rangers background
• power rangers mighty morphin
• power ranger vector mighty morphin
• mighty morphin power rangers masks

Entire Katrina Sim Goes Mesh: Doctor Who Expo and Millenium Center Pioneers in Second Life

By Samantha Lowell

Doctor Who is the longest running science fiction television series in history.

The entire Katrina sim, home of the Doctor Who Exposition and Millenium Center- Second Life’s oldest Doctor Who sim, is now undergoing a complete conversion to an all-mesh format, the first sim in Second Life history ever to do so on such a scale.  Linden Lab recently introduced a new feature to its Second Life platform: the ability for users to upload their own models created in 3D programs such as Maya, Max or Blender and use them in-world.

One of those responsible for placing the sim on Second Life’s cutting edge is co-owner Victor1st Mornington, who described the inception of the ground breaking project four years ago.

“It was something the owners have been talking about for a while,” Mornington said, “In the first 2 or 3 seasons of the new Dr Who (Eccleston and Tennant era) Cardiff Bay featured heavily, and it was also featured in Torchwood, but now Cardiff is not seen in any of the shows. Plus, Katrina has had the same look for 4 years, it’s become a bit stale…so it was time for something refreshing and new.”

Though the owners and staff had hoped for an earlier release in November, the current anticipated date of completion is in now around Christmas, owing to the enormity of the project. Now that Mesh is an established part of second life, the project is beginning in earnest and Mornington is quick to point out that the massive rebuild is very much a collaborative effort. Though initially largely the brain child of such innovators as co-owners to EzY McAlpine, Marinedalek Tomorrow, Cobalt Neutra and Shortpeiceof String, the conversion is being undertaken by the entire Katrina staff, a truly monumental undertaking.

Most of the original construction has been deleted and Blender, 3dsmax and other 3 modeling programs are being used to create the new structures. The only technical difficulties are discrepancies in Levels of Detail (LODS) between the various 3D programs, and Mornington describes those problems as fairly minor.

Amelia Pond, on the news that the Second Life Doctor Who sim at Katrina was going to be entirely rebuilt using mesh models.

So why all mesh? “It worked out easier and more prim economic to do it in mesh,” Mornington explained, “Mesh still hasn’t had a massive impact in SL (especially with the problems of clothing) but we are seeing a vast majority of folks using a mesh compatible viewer…so we went with mesh.”

The new sim construction will be unveiled in a massive Doctor Who Expo in late December, with content creators unveiling new and exclusive Doctor Who related creations for the occasion. Mornington himself is undertaking the mesh rebuild of the mammoth Zenobia Station, a Gallifreyan Themed space station.

Mornington alluded to a surprise, “something very big” that would be unveiled for the exposition, but declined to give any hints. Second Life now watches and waits eagerly for the bright future of the oldest sim in Second Life’s Doctor Who fan pantheon. Krypton Radio will provide more news as it develops.

- 30 -

Incoming search terms:

• power rangers background
• power rangers mighty morphin
• power ranger vector mighty morphin
• mighty morphin power rangers masks

Official statements about Krypton Radio, its staff, its related groups such as the League of Heroes or the Second Life group Justice League Unlimited, Phantom Zone, GridWatch, Krypton Universe and other affiliated groups come only from Krypton Radio and its staff. No other entities have been authorized to speak for us, or represent our interests in any way.

Incoming search terms:

• power rangers background
• power rangers mighty morphin
• power ranger vector mighty morphin
• mighty morphin power rangers masks

“Anonymous” Fizzle After Fizzle as Arrests Continue

Krypton Radio Newswire

Dumpster Knights of LulzSec

On October 6, 2011, the group Anonymous released a video stating that Los Zetas, a Mexican drug cartel, had kidnapped one of the group’s members.  Anonymous threatened that unless the hostage was freed, they would publish personal information about members of the cartel and their collaborators in politics, police, military, and business, which might lead to their persecution by rival cartels or Mexican authorities.   However, according to the U.K. Guardian, two hacker members of “Operation: Cartel”  have now indicated that they are “stopping their scheme to identify collaborators and members because they don’t want anyone to be killed as a result”.  This sudden backpedal is very likely in response to the discovery in September of  the torture and murder of two bloggers found hung from a bridge in Mexico along with the message, “This is going to happen to all of those posting funny things on the Internet, you better (expletive) pay attention. I’m about to get you.”

It now appears that there may never have even been an abduction.  No police reports of an abduction have surfaced.   The retraction by the British members of Anonymous may simply be a rethink on the real world consequences of going up against drug lords with nothing to lose armed with nothing more than pixels and electrons.

Anonymous, the self-proclaimed ‘hacktivist’ organization, is known primarily for criminal acts of illegal entry into commercial and government computer systems, but usually carrying out acts of retribution for what they perceive as injustice.  These acts of retribution often consist of mass theft of tens of thousands of personal or financial records, defacement of web sites of branches of both the United States government and governments abroad, and denial of service attacks using their LOIC (“Low Orbit Ion Cannon”) distributed attack software.  The group has no apparent leader, instead seeming to act on whatever idea seems to be popular in various chat sites such as 4Chan.org, and often takes actions that appear contradictory to statements made by Anonymous spokesmen.

From Altruism to Crime & Punishment

Anonymous first gained significant attention from their opposition to the Church of Scientology’s questionable practices, staging both online attacks and real world protests.  Protests in February and March of 2008 gathered thousands of protesters in more than 93 cities worldwide.  While the protests were conducted in a relatively peaceful and legal manner, however, the attacks on the web site were not, and in October of that year 18-year old Dmitriy Guzner from New Jersey and self-proclaimed member of Anonymous was indicted and pled guilty to the internet attacks on the Church of Scientology websites.

In 2009, a wave of attempts by various governments to attempt to censor content on the internet captured the attention of Anonymous.  Australia in particular was attempting to enact laws that would require ISP’s to filter internet content to restrict the distribution of  child pornography.  The rules were widely considered unworkable – though while citizens’ groups within Australia worked through the proper channels to resolve the matter and were eventually successful, Anonymous took another approach:   they declared war on Australia.  On September 10, 2009 Anonymous took down the Prime Minister’s website. It was offline for approximately one hour.

On February 10, 2010, Anonymous launched a more prepared attack, called ‘Operation: Titstorm’ and defaced the web site of Stephen Conroy, Australia’s Prim Minister, attacked the Parliament web site and took it offline for three days, and nearly taking the Department of Communication’s website down. The Australian press later said that the attacks were not considered a serious crimes by information security consultants, who suggested they only had an impact because the government “knew the [second] attack was coming but was unable to stop it.”  Anonymous then began discussing assassination of Stephen Conroy as a possible next move.

Public opinion swayed sharply against Anonymous.  In a furious back-pedal move, they changed the name of the operation to “Operation Freeweb”, and began staging real life demonstrations through March – however, the thousands of marchers in the streets promised by Anonymous materialized in the form of only dozens of participants and not the thousands they promised. In the end, it was public opinion that the new rules would do little to protect children online and would stifle free speech that put Conroy’s plans on the back burner.

In December of 2010, Anonymous “helped” Wikileaks operator Julian Assange by attacking and temporarily shutting down PostFinance, the bank that froze assets belonging to Assange.  They also targeted both PayPal and Twitter.  Paypal was hacked, and now Anonymous was invading online banking and gaining access to other people’s money.  In January of 2011, the FBI issued more than 40 search warrants in relation to the coordinated denial of service attacks perpetrated by Anonymous, and by July 14 people were arrested and indicted in connection with that breakin.

On February 16, 2011, the group wrote an open letter to the Westboro Baptist Church, infamous for picketing the funerals of fallen soldiers and its homophobic rhetoric, stating: “Cease & desist your protest campaign in the year 2011 … close your public web sites. Should you ignore this warning … the propaganda & detestable doctrine that you promote will be eradicated; the damage incurred will be irreversible, and neither your institution nor your congregation will ever be able to fully recover.”

On February 19, 2011, the church responded, telling Anonymous to “bring it on” and calling them, among other things, “a puddle of pimple-faced nerds.” Anonymous then backpedaled, denied sending the threat, hinting that the church itself had sent it, suggesting that it was a member of the church itself, hoping to provoke an attack, leading to the Westboro Baptist Church being able to retaliate against the Internet Service Providers in court, and gain it more publicity. They also claimed that they had more pressing matters to attend to, namely the support of the protests that lead to the 2011 Libyan civil war.   However, this was likelyalso backpedaling, considering that the FBI had been using LOIC to track down and arrest members of Anonymous. Using the LOIC at this point would have been dangerous.

Anonymous then suggested tactics for those who wished to attack Westboro nevertheless, avoiding denial of service attacks  in favor of sending “prostitutes, preferably male,” and in general to “rape their asses in the most unpredictable ways possible.”

In response to the 2011 Libyan civil war, Anonymous hacked into Libyan government websites, and persuaded the host of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi’s personal website to take it down.  Anonymous also released the names and passwords of the email addresses of Middle Eastern governmental officials, in support of the Arab Spring. Countries targeted included officials from Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, and Morocco.  In early August, Anonymous hacked the Syrian Defense Ministry website and replaced it with a vector image of the pre-Ba’athist flag, a symbol of the pro-democracy movement in the country, as well as a message supporting the 2011 Syrian uprising and calling on members of the Syrian Army to defect to protect protesters.

Then they turned their attention to Sony – in a flurry of attacks on the Sony Playstation Network, Sony Pictures and Sony BMG, the private account information of approximately 100 million users was stolen, costing Sony an estimated $170 million.  LulzSec, a spinoff of Anonymous, was responsible this time, and two of its members, “Topiary” and “recursion” were arrested.  Once again, Anonymous backpedaled and claimed that they’d gotten the wrong men, that they weren’t really Anonymous, and that it wasn’t really LulzSec.

The “Poser” Effect

Anonymous' claims to effectiveness are often outrageously exaggerated...

Anyone can claim to be Anonymous, to cash in on both the publicity and public apprehension that the group’s name has come to represent. Put on a “V” mask, and you have instant respect, instant admiration – or do you?  According to this Amplicate poll, more than 88% of those participating hate Anonymous. Amplicate aggregates opinions and posts from both Twitter and Facebook, so the results can’t be faked simply by vote-bombing a survey site.

Still, the appeal comes from somewhere.  Most today agree that it had its start on 4Chan.org, an image chat room where practically anything goes, including at times child pornography, planning of attacks on individuals and companies via the internet, and just generally anybody they don’t like.  4Chan and boards like it are primarily the hangout of teenagers and adults suffering from arrested development. The long standing troll wiki, Encyclopedia Dramatica, sometimes described as “the ***hole of the internet”, is their playground, where they freely slander or attack anyone they choose, where often their victim’s only crime is standing up to them, or being socially different.  Anonymous even used the platform to organize some of their more well known attacks on both public and private individuals, and that remains one of its more prominent features to this day.

The ability to anonymously hound and harass anyone without consequence draws people into downward spirals of internet harassment behavior in huge numbers who would otherwise be law abiding citizens.

Anonymous, in its early days, had also claimed responsibility for an attack on the popular social chat service Habbo Hotel in 2006, by using avatars sporting afro hairstyles to block entrances to online areas, and later, arranging avatars into a formation shaped like a swastika. When sanctioned by the Habbo Hotel administrators, they claim racial oppression, even though few if any of the avatar operators were actually non-white.

The afro wig meme carried over into various Anonymous activities, including the invasion of Second Life by members of Anonymous in December of 2006, which spawned the creation of the Second Life-focused griefer gang calling themselves the Patriotic Nigras, the members of which fled to other groups in Second Life such as Woodbury University and The Wrong Hands.  Here too, complaints of racial profiling were leveled against Linden Lab, despite the fact that no documentable non-white participants were ever identified. The Woodbury University cyber-gang were repeatedly mass banned, losing virtual land holdings each time, with the final mass banned from Second Life in April of 2010.  The Patriotic Nigras ceased operations two months later in June, and the Wrong Hands leaders were mass banned in July of 2011.

The pattern is clear.  New Anonymous join because they believe the hype.  Existing Anonymous feel compelled to lie about nearly every aspect of what they do in order to sustain that hype, because if they don’t, the hype evaporates and we are left with the far less glamorous truth.

Today was the day Anonymous was going to attack Facebook.  And Google.  And Fox News.

The plan to attack Facebook, however, was dismissed casually by that online service as being unlikely to succeed – yet its revival demonstrates the lack of central leadership or consensus among self-described Anonymous. Anonymous spokespersons seem to be releasing information both confirming and denying the attack.  Given the sudden uptick in arrests, and the discovery that hacking scripts are no match for either the police or the drug lords, the group may be learning that Anonymous’ paper tiger is far more paper than tiger, and far less anonymous than it had previously supposed.  And certainly a lot less well liked.

Links

• Daily Dot – Doubts About Anonymous Abduction Facing Skepticism
• The Guardian (UK) – Anonymous Zetas Hacking Climbdown?
• NPR – Hacker Group Backs Away From Threat to Mexican Cartel
• PCWorld – Anonymous_and_Westboro_Baptist_Church
• Veracity Stew – Operation: Foxhunt – Anonymous to attack Facebook, Fox, and Google
• Krypton Radio – Dumpster Knights: The True Face of Hactivism 
• Anti-Anonymous page on Facebook
• E-mpire.com – The-Many-Lies-of-Anonymous
• Krypton Radio – New LulzSec Arrest in Arizona – ‘recursion’ in Custody
• Krypton Radio – Alleged LulzSec Member Arrested by Scotland Yard
• Wired – Anonymous 101: Introduction to the Lulz

Incoming search terms:

• power rangers background
• power rangers mighty morphin
• power ranger vector mighty morphin
• mighty morphin power rangers masks

ROMA Greets Its Five Year Anniversary on the Grid October 15-16

by Melanippe of Thymascyra

Lumeralia Festival in Roma, Second Life

Imagine you are making your way along a narrow, yet sunny alleyway. Carts and boxes crowd the open spaces, causing your sandal-shod steps to be taken carefully. Finally, after ducking under one last awning, the alley empties out into a fountained square, where a snow leopard in a purple-striped toga (not unlike the one draped around yourself), a Legionary in full armour and a woman in a bright peplos hold a lively conversation. At that same moment, an announcement rings out about a ‘Magical Mercury Tour’ while Apollo supplants his twin sister in watching over the large sundial next to the fountain.

Welcome to ROMA in Second Life.

During this month of October, a special anniversary will take place — ROMA will celebrate its fifth anniversary as a community. Not only is it the oldest Classical-period sim on the grid, five years is an extraordinary age for any themed community at all.

The visitor’s Roma experience begins in the heart of the city itself, arriving at the Customs House, where they may acquire a set of the Twelves Tables (the local rules) as well as some free clothing if they wish to dress in appropriate style. Roma’s theme is optional for visitors, but most find it fun to buy their first toga and explore in sandals rather than jeans and high heels. Uphill are the Capitoline Hill which includes the Temple of Jupiter, and the Imperator’s gardens, all open to view.

To the east is Subura, the residential neighbourhood. Although the homes are private, there is a public latrina and laundry, temples which may be visited, and gardens to enjoy.

North of the city proper is Transtiberim, which starts with the River Tiber, the Street of the Dead and is home to the rural settlement of Ostia. Ostia is the home of the Legio XIII Gemina, the Collegia Religio Romana, the Ludus for the gladiator school and the port, from which both pleasure vessels and naval forces sail. Transtiberim also has several special educational displays – an interactive archeological dig, authentically-constructed baths, and a burial site. The more adventurous explorers will find the Sybil’s seat, the hot springs (free towels!), the Medusa’s mirror and the Lupercal Cave.

Maritima is also north, connecting Subura and Ostia by means of a sea. Small islands are scattered through the waters, which also lap the private homestead of Diania (owned by one of the ‘gens’, or great Roman families) further east, and the business sim of Insula, home of Ars Avete/Ars Toga, forming a northern shore.

One of the most striking features of Roma as a whole are the two newest additions – Vicus and Vinovium. Sponsored by Stanford University and Durham University, these two sims exist as a living reproduction of ongoing archeological work at Binchester in northern England. The Roman fort and town are being recreated in Second Life as pieces and structures are uncovered, bit by bit, by the excavators.

Torin Golding, the Prefect (and owner) of Roma, has a PhD in Classical Archaeology, which is what inspired him to create Roma in the form it has. Roma exists not just as a vital themed community, but also as an educational tool, seeking to enlighten and inform by entertainment. Roma’s buildings are not necessarily exact copies of historial sites, but evoke the building style of the period and allow interactivity with the sites in a way not possible short of visiting a First Life location. With the addition of the various citizen groups – the senators and curia members, the roleplayers, the military, the priesthood, the families – Roma’s vitality brings a sense of the Imperial city to life.

Roma’s Fifth Anniversary and the festivals of Armilustrium and Lemuralia will be celebrated on the 15th and 16th of October, along with Roma’s annual Halloween party. Please see the calendar linked to the Roma Citizens blog for a detailled schedule of events.

Links

• Roma Citizens Blog
• Stanford University’s Humanities Lab
• Stanford University – Digital Desiderata: the Future of Archaeology’s ‘Second Life’ in Augmenting Media (1.1)

Incoming search terms:

• power rangers background
• power rangers mighty morphin
• power ranger vector mighty morphin
• mighty morphin power rangers masks

Joy Solutions

On Saturday, the 17 September 2011, JOY Estate and JOY Solutions opened their doors on Avination®

Krypton Radio Newswire

The inarguable success of Linden Lab’s Second Life online virtual world has spawned many spinoff platforms, such as SpotOn3D, InWorldz, Avination, OpenSim and roughly a dozen others.  While none have the sheer mass and complexity of the original, these other MMO’s have features that make them attractive.  Few are robust enough to support the full gamut of possibilities offered by Second Life – but one that’s getting close is Avination.  So close, in fact, that companies are starting to move into t his secondary virtual world with the anticipation of actually being able to turn a profit.  One of the greatest obstacles facing business trying to stay viable in Second Life is the monthly fees associated with owning and operating a private, non-mainland  region on that platform.  Avination makes a very tempting platform on this basis alone: a mere $60 USD per month for a full region, as contrasted to Second Life’s $295 USD.

One of the first businesses to jump into Avination with both feet is Marc Montague’s JOY Estate is opening its doors with two sims in Avination, called “Joy” and “Alameda”.  The sims recall a seaside village on the coast of the Mediterranean, with what founder Marcus Kretschmer (Marc Montague is his avatar name in Avination) describes as luxury amenities not found elsewhere.  The Joy Solutions store is on the “Joy” sim and features prefabricated homes and low prim furniture. Their  house music club is also there.  It’s called ‘The Wave’, and it’s the first club of its kind in Avination.

It’s always interesting to see how new businesses start out and how they’re using their energies and resources, so we caught up with Mr. Kretschmer and talked to him about his new venture:

Krypton Radio: Tell us a little bit about who you are and what shaped your interest and involvement with online virtual worlds.

Marc Montague: In virtual worlds, I have chosen to use the name Marc Montague, as I really like the name Montague from the Shakespearean play ‘Romeo & Juliet’. In the physical world my name is Marcus Kretschmer, I am German born and raised, but spent the last 10 years in the City of London in the United Kingdom.

I came to virtual worlds during an evening show of ‘Channel 4 News’ whereby a report about Second Life ran. I signed up in ‘Second Life’ at the end of October 2006 to have as my very first experience being an endless freefall out of the sky and bumping into the ground in front of a club.  I was very confused as nobody seemed to have a clue or interest in talking or helping me to understand what I should do next.

But as much as I was confused, I was hooked at that moment and I was intrigued to learn and fully understand what this environment was good for. I was never really what you’d call a gamer or code monkey. I taught myself HTML, Javascript and a bit of PHP, but I would not call myself a programming genius, but what I saw was for me breathtaking, as I learned very quickly  that I could communicate, collaborate and exchange with people all over the globe on things that I found interesting, like building, designing, business and education.

Between 2007 and 2008 I was primary involved in several projects, such as the islands for Bad Puppy.com – ‘CLC’ and Nokia and several mainland projects.  I also contributed complete sim designs for several years for  Remembering Our Friends – first as a renter, then later as a sim owner.  I also owned in-world businesses like BDMM Design, which I feel contributed contributed strongly to the inworld economies, in part by actively supp0rting various media outlets such as Metaverse TV, Treet TV,  and BOSL Magazine.

In 2009, I took my pure in-world business the first time officially off-world and created with a business partner a physical world based registered company called ‘V-Innovate Ltd.’

KR: Do you have a background in art and design?  Game development?  Programming?

Marc: I do not have a degree in art and design, game development or programming. In the late 80′s I studied architecture and got my degree in City Development.  In the 90′s I studied economics and marketing nad have advanced degrees in that, public relations and human resources.

I was drawn to Second Life in 2006 partly because the platform gave me an outlet for my creativity with respect to architecture.  During my scholastic career, you did everything on paper, not computers, so this was a very strong lure for me.

KR: What is it that ignites your imagination about virtual worlds, and why Avination specifically?

Marc: My own experience has shown me that you can only come to a full understanding of how beneficial a virtual world can be for problem solving and project visualization by getting hands-on experience and seeing the tools for yourself. I think if you can see it, you can understand it.

I have been in Second Life every day, since 2006, as I am a whole hearted believer that this kind of environment is a solution tool for multiple challenges that people or even human kind is facing. I see Second Life as a representation of a lot of great advances that will aid business, education, the arts, media and the entertainment industry. I don’t believe that Second Life alone will be the only tool usable, or Avination, or Reaction Grid, or even SpotOn3D will necessarily be the solution to these problems, but they do give us more tools for dealing with them..

I see all virtual worlds more as tools in a larger tool box and I use the correct tools for the job to achieve my desired outcome for my customers and myself. I am not only looking into the direction of OpenSIM based platform solutions, but also toward a move back to the web.  Unity 3D, for example, is another prospective tool in my ever bigger growing tool box, as this industry is growing by the hour.

KR: When did you found Pixel Lighthouse?

Marc: I worked during the year 2010 alone as a single entrepreneur on Pixel Lighthouse and we incorporated Pixel Lighthouse Ltd. on the 1 February 2011. Pixel Lighthouse is founded by people that see this ever growing industry of virtual and augmented reality as a means to solve problems. Our challenge is to find solutions using finite  human resources and capital and achieve the best possible outcome.

KR:  We see that Pixel Lighthouse seems to be primarily interested in the use of virtual worlds for educational purposes.  What specific aspect of education are you focused on?

Marc: This is partially correct; our current direction is to aid the business and educational community around the world to better the outcome of the ‘bottom-line’.

This bottom-line can be fiscal or a knowledge transfer. Our products of virtual education as well as business solutions are using the predetermined IT infrastructure and builds on it as the base to supply the best solution available. We are not limiting ourselves to virtual environments or the latest augmented reality gadget. If  the IT infrastructure does not support it, we fall back to 2D web based solutions, such as WIKI’s, Twitter, Facebook or even chat rooms.

The main aim of  Pixel Lighthouse is to help businesses or educational institutions make best use of social media platforms to maximise the outcome to the best potential for the end-user, which can be internal or external business customers, or pupils and students in educational systems worldwide.

How is the virtual environment facilitating that?  How effective do you find this medium?  What obstacles have you overcome?  What challenges face you still?

The virtual environment is the connector, facilitator and the ground that the solution we developed is standing on. I believe that virtual words are a fantastic medium and very effective. The biggest challenge is two-fold.

1. The customer’s  facing challenge is that virtual worlds are seen by thirty year olds and up as a gaming environment. The relative lack of repeating themes  in surrounding   communities throughout blogs from users, visitors, creators and platform providers to this target group to show that this is not a game, as the goal is not to slay dragons, farm gold or breed horses to sell them on.  That’s making it hard to get the message across to our customers when we speak about Second Life.  I am much more in favour of an approach like SpotOn3D. Even though that SpotOn3D has had some PR turmoil in the last couple of weeks, the products they build and distribute make the entrance to the business community easier. Having said this, the solution to wrap a website around their Hippo Viewer client is a good step, but I foresee it only a short-term solution, as the client itself is still too heavy weight for most business machines.  Educational computer lab hardware especially  will not be able to cope with the demand of the client software in all parts of the world. And to be the business solution, you have to be able to  handle the even lowest hardware in a kind of way that makes it possible to engage, collaborate and deliver the intended solution to your customers, pupils or students. This is why Pixel Lighthouse has in its mix the usage of Unity 3D based virtual world solutions.

2. As I might have already alluded to in No.1, the IT infrastructure in most professional businesses, as well as and especially in educational facilities is more than wanting. It is understandable that a renewal cycle of mostly five years for the IT infrastructure has now been even more stretched, due to the economical worldwide turmoils. Most of the time our biggest challenge is when we consult on IT infrastructure to FTSE 100 or TOP500 companies, to make them understood that a solution that might work perfectly well on the children’s or even parent’s home PC or laptop, which was bought in 2010, but that it desperately fails in their company’s environment because the hardware is too old or lacks support for graphics. To tell someone to invest first a 500,000 USD upgrade to all in-house PC’s and laptops to upgrade to the latest allowed graphic card is a very hard sell if the outcome is not support by already seen and verified gains.

Pixel Lighthouse primarily consults  with marketing executives as well as the CEO’s of companies to ensure that a full understanding at the top is secured before we propose our solutions and what those benefits those solutions will bring.  It’s a shift from doing education to doing estate management.

KR: What invited this expansion or transition into the area of content creation and estate management?

Marc: It looks like it, but in the greater scheme of things this is a dream of mine for a very long time. I always wanted to design my own virtual continent, and in Second Life it is a task that is possible if you have the means to your disposal. For a European Union based European avatar owner, this dream cost you 295 USD plus your local V.A.T., which is in the United Kingdom currently 20 % per SIM. Affording a SIM in Second Life cost me 354 USD a month. The same SIM cost an Avination resident 60 USD a month, which means that a close to one to six cost ratios is a better business model. In regards to content creation I was very involved in prefabricated homes and furniture from 2006 to 2009 with my in-world business BDMM Design.

KR: What services are you providing in Avination, and what need in the current business environment do your services fill?

Marc:  The Avination in-world businesses Joy Solutions and Joy Estate are two complementing businesses to enhance the experience of the Avination residents. The services we are offering are completing the needs of an Avination resident that are looking for pre-fabricated homes, as well as furniture and more on the one hand and on the other offering land that has a pre-set theme, which involves warm, residential colours, that reminds at the Mediterranean scenery such as Italy and Spain.

KR: How large an effort is this?  What’s the scope and focus?  How is what you’re doing better than the efforts of other, similar companies (or are there, in fact, any companies doing things similar to yours)?

 Marc: The current site of Joy Solutions and the Joy Estate are one sim each. The idea is to expand to an estate large enough to sustain real employment of estate & event managers and contributors to the needs of a business. In the virtual environment of Avination, the project that Joy Estate started is currently unique in its form, outline and estimation. There are already estate owners that are supplying land in the typical fashion of 4096 sqm or bigger plots, what makes the Joy Estate different that not every little sqm is plotted off and sold, we are determined to supply land for everybody with amenities to be used by all Avination residents and especially by the residents of the Joy Estate at any time.

KR: The big question is, why Avination, when there are so many virtual worlds to choose from these days?  Is it more stable?  Better business model?  Why not just use Second Life for this?

Marc: Avination has a great opportunity becoming a viable alternative to Second Life, in the scheme of comparing Avination with providers like inWorldz, ReactionGrid, AVWorld and others. I believe this is possible through a complete different outset of circumstances that are surrounding Avination. As Avination is European based, with its hosting services and company structure based in the United Kingdom the legislative rules applied to Avination are different than any other virtual environment that has an outset to rival Second Life. All other virtual world competitors have the same circumstances attached to them as they are all US bound, and for me the question appeared, why should I invest into an exact copy of Second Life which has in the future the same outlined restrictions as Second Life has now in an economics, legislative and company policy sense.

KR: Is Avination robust enough in terms of scripting and physics to truly handle what you’re trying to do?  What are the shortfalls in your opinion, and how rapidly have they been addressing and fixing issues?

Marc: Avination has all conditions as other OpenSIM environments have, with the difference that Avination has the VirVox voice systems, which is very well known in Second Life. Avination is currently in negotiations with Havoc© physics engine to have the same physics applied as Second Life.

The internal support is outstanding as Avination has already several members of employed staff and a number of mentors that are pro-active in Avination. The access to the A-Team, when seen online is by IM request for help or by raising a ticket that has a turn-around time of a couple of hours in the European daylight times, or a maximum of 24 hours. Even though that it is clear to me that when Avination as a company is growing dramatically that the turn-around time for tickets or the online time for the A-Team will diminish, this is a common process of growing.

KR: Do you see Second Life remaining viable with these other platforms out there and offering the same sorts of services for a fraction of what Linden Lab charges?

Marc: The current business model of Second Life is only sustainable as the majority of content is in Second Life and this is the reason why I do not believe that Linden Research will be happily ever opening up to an interoperable hypergrid system, that allows content freely travelling between worlds. To make clear, I believe that the pricing concept that Linden Labs is forcing on its population is over long time not sustainable and will be soon a deciding factor for Linden Research, Inc. to restructure, become leaner and way more price conscious.

Avination’s director Melanie Thielker (in-world “Melanie Milland”) has made it very  clear that she is not interested in creating in-world content, she is only interested in providing the service and selling regions in-world. This gives every content creator like me a sense of calm that I do not need to fear competition by the platform owner, such it is since 2009 in Second Life, where you were and still are able to buy regions with ready-made content by certain preselected content creators. I personally wish Linden Research, Inc. always the best and want to state categorically that what I am today is due to the persistence and forceful imagination of Philip Rosedale. If he wouldn’t have been doing what he did, the OpenSIM community might have existed but wouldn’t have got the prominence it had and still has in the IT industry. Second Life was and is the step that was needed to put this industry onto a starting point and onto the radar of a lot of people, and I am counting myself into this bunch of people.

KR: What’s the social environment like in Avination?  The Second Life civic environment can be very ingrown and self-referential – does Avination offer relief from that, or do you see substantial parallels?

Marc: This is quite an interesting question, as I believe to understand this question in that way ‘has Avination ‘self-centric’ groups and people’. I believe that this is the product of each society that has grown without any regulatory measures. I came to Second Life in October 2006 and experienced that people that had already been in Second Life earlier than me, complaint about the status of the people, which are now coming into Second Life, do not have any sense of community inclusion. I believe that

1. The people will have always a sense of community, once they have understood that this environment is made, loved and maintained by people like themselves. I am afraid to say that I found people complaining about the newcomers being ‘anti-social’ and in the same breath described them as noobs or newbies.

2. Avination is currently socially at the state of Second Life in 2004 / 2005, where groups / cliques are forming of people that have been there ‘from the beginning’. An active steering against this common movement of the social entrepreneurs in a newly formed social virtual environment has to be carefully observed and if need be corrected by the Avination residents and management in the way of tackling derogatory and devaluing comments by the residents towards the new coming resident or a competing virtual environment to enable the possible contribution of a new coming avatar.

3. Avination has a concept of what went wrong and what went right in Second Life, as they pro-actively awaiting in the welcome area sim  ‘Welcome’ newly approaching avatars with greeters that are manned by A-Team members or Avination mentors.

4. The main responsibility lies with the general Avination resident itself. If a resident wants to experience the best of a 3D virtual environment than I have to be open, friendly and welcoming in my questioning as well as the answering to enable a constructive, positive and collaborative conversation.

KR: And lastly, if you can project this far, what are your long term goals?  Where do you see this going in five years?  What would you like to accomplish?

Marc: The project in Avination is built and geared for growth. I will be asking for more investment than the typical land owner that just circles off plots and sells them to the public.

The goal of the Joy Estate is the beauty and inclusion of happiness of the visitor and resident of the Joy Estate.

The Joy Estate thrives always for the best landscape, terraforming, design in its display and allows all people the freedom of expression that complements the estate theme. Even though we are at the absolute beginning of the Joy Estate, I foresee a multiple, massive, sustainable estate, that has large and vast amount of land and sea to be commutatively used by all visitors and Joy Estate residents and create in that way a beautiful, active, social environment in which a community thrives to achieve the best possible outcome of the original stated goal.

- 30 -

Links

• http://www.myjoyhome.com
• Bad Puppy.com 
• Pixel Lighthouse

Incoming search terms:

• power rangers background
• power rangers mighty morphin
• power ranger vector mighty morphin
• mighty morphin power rangers masks

Incoming search terms:

• power rangers background
• power rangers mighty morphin
• power ranger vector mighty morphin
• mighty morphin power rangers masks

How A Few Facts and a Lot of Lies Swayed An Unknowing Public

Krypton Radio Newswire

Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.

- Isaac Asimov

There have been public debates recently over whether the Justice League Unlimited group operating in Second Life has been harvesting IP addresses and is currently holding private information about Second Life citizens.  The answer is a simple “no”.  The League has never harvested IP addresses, and currently holds no private information about Second Life users.

Many people on various forums and some in-world venues, are raging and calling for the removal of the Justice League from Second Life. And while everyone has their right to their own opinion, we do want to straighten out some misinformation which is being spread by various people and groups who were actually banned from SL, and are trying to get revenge on the League over our investigative reporting which have exposed their very real criminal actions.

Our greatest concern is that people in general are being lead to take the word of a website which claims to be exposing the “evils” of the League. However when you actually read through the website, you’ll see they’re actually exposing their own true nature.

The site in question is “TheListSL”, which claims to be targeting JLU members to expose them.  If one looks at this site’s history, though, the site has been exposing private information on Second Life users a long time before they decided to focus on the League, posting real world data on Second Life users, using obscene and abusive language to describe their hatred for the people whose Second Life and real life information they’ve linked and posted online for the world to see.

While Linden Lab has publicly declined to involve itself in this matter, we are going to be up front and answer some questions on the material being “leaked”.

Soft Linden's detective work pays off and proves the IP list is not only a forgery, but created by people already banned from Second Life themselves.

The Big Lie

The debacle started with what propagandists call “A Big Lie”.  People generally need to believe one another, yet also are on the lookout for falsehood. Most of regularly tell small lies and engage in minor deception, and so expect others to do likewise. When a big lie is told, this does not fit into our model of modest mendacity, and so we say ‘It must be true’.  In this case the Big Lie was that the League was somehow harvesting the IP addresses of users in Second Life and cross referencing them to discover and record people’s alternate accounts.  This Big Lie ran in various public forums unchecked for two weeks.  The debate was not begun by legitimately concerned residents of Second Life, but by people who, for the most part, had already been banned from Second Life and no longer had a stake in the outcome.

Coincidentally, the day Tux Winkler was banned from Second Life for creating an avatar tracking system and using it to stalk people in Second Life, he proclaimed that his new system (a much better one) was already operational and gathered much more data than his previous one did.

It doesn’t take much guesswork to figure out where the Red Zone style IP list had come from. The alt detection data being released on theListSL was, in effect, a forgery.  It was real data, but it was being used to perpetuate a massive lie – that the League had done it.  By this time two or three dozen people had joined the discussion and had become morally outraged over something that had never actually taken place, and we were off to the races.

Once Soft Linden had actually analyzed the IP list and had determined that it had been produced by “a member of a group that has been banned from Second Life and told not to return”, the second part of the master plan was executed – the publication of supposedly unmodified data from the BrainiacWiki itself.  This is the evidence stage of a propaganda attack, called “Card Stacking”.  Evidence, even falsified evidence, can be very persuasive.  The attackers mixed just enough truth with the falsified evidence to make it sound “truthy”, editing information heavily to make it appear as though things said well over a year ago were said just weeks ago in an effort to support the already failing proposition that the “leaked” IP list was genuine.

Is the information being posted on TheListSL real?

Yes and no.   Some of what is being “leaked” is from our database., but large portions of it have been altered, and some of it has been completely fabricated, and other portions taken out of context or had the dates removed so that it appears that something was said recently when it had actually been said well over a year ago when Second Life rules were different than they are today.

Is the public outrage posted on SL Universe real?

We think some people are genuinely indignant or upset, but we also think they’ve been given a lot of false information in order to enrage them.

In the SL Universe thread as of August 25, we note that an astonishing whopping 1036 posts were made by  members of the banned Second Life group, “The Wrong Hands” or the person posting supposedly un-doctored pages from our wiki (and in one case, someone whom we discovered to be impersonating a police officer and who has been trying to phish private  information from people within Second Life).  Regular readers of Krypton Radio should recognize most of these names already from previous Wrong Hands reports:

Tux Winkler 201 (including the first-ever post of his own information anywhere on the ‘net)
Ryokashi 153
Robble Rubble 136
TheListSL 96
Cummere Mayo 91
Economic Engineer 83
Code Slacker 74
Kiddoh Korobase 68
Atlas Saintlouis 57
Dontspill McGinnis 41
charitystohr 36

Remember that the first two weeks of this thread contained nothing but discussion of how abhorrent our IP harvesting system was – the one we weren’t actually running, based on falsified evidence presented by an anonymous attacker.  At the same time, a fake online petition was started by the same trolls.  The site featured no means of verifying that any of the participants were actually Second Life citizens at all, nor did it prevent people from “signing” the petition dozens of times each using different names, which a large number of people did – no one knows for sure how large.

Also posting in this thread and doing his level best at rabble rousing is N3X15, the infamous leader of the Patriotic Nigras between 2007 and 2010 (there were sock puppet leaders, but they were largely figureheads – it was N3X15 ultimately pulling the strings).  Yet N3X15 hopes that everyone has forgotten that he led a group created simply to victimize everyone in Second Life, and to bring about the demise of the platform if possible.  The Patriotic Nigras web site was finally removed from the internet in June of 2010, though the weapons scripts archive lived on for a time on Tux Winkler’s web site.

These are the “injured parties” who are crying foul the loudest, and the ones who hope we will all forget how all this started in the first place – with their own misdeeds and with them getting caught doing them.  Keep in mind also that if Tux Winkler was so very upset about his personal information being held in a place where nobody could see it, why did he post his own cirriculum vitae in a public forum for the entire world to see? Clearly the safety of his family is not his aim, or he wouldn’t have done this.  He’s after revenge, not justice.

Over time it became clear in the threads that people claiming to be law enforcement were actually play-acting teenagers, and that people who claimed to file real world law suits against the League and its members had not actually done so.

Was the information actually leaked by a disgruntled JLU member as they claim?

We had originally thought that the information was stolen from our systems by a hacker, who managed to compromise the account of a (now former) JLU member , which was then used to steal the connection credentials necessary to breach our database. Linden Lab notified us that a member account was breached, and that they had detected spyware placed by that account in our in-world headquarters.  The chat spy devices (there were two) were active between August 3, 2011, when they was placed, and August 18, when they were removed (about fifteen days).

We had received word that an alt of Cheergirl Allen, a Wrong Hands sympathizer, had managed to sneak a mole account into the League and had ready access to the BrainiacWiki over the span of about three month’s time – though at this point the source of the information is in doubt.  Our records do indicate that an account was shared with others who had no legitimate right of access – once again, the content was not “liberated”, or “reported”, but simply stolen.   Much of the information being “leaked” has been heavily modified from the original, and much has been simply fabricated from whole cloth.  Enough of it matches what we have, though, to show us that a major break-in and theft has occurred. Aside from this, Cheergirl is a member of the Robble Rubble Fan Club, and her use of the Neil Life client featuring sim crashing tools is well documented.  She was a major participant in a faked chat spy incident wherein a Thomas Connover radar system was moved to her land and “discovered” by a small group of the usual suspects.

Linden Lab did not violate anyone’s privacy in notifying us of this. The spyware detected was transmitting chat and other information to a server that LL has been monitoring relative to activity by previously banned griefers who were using alts to bypass their bans.

How much of what they’re posting is accurate?

The Justice League has helped in uncovering actual crime in Second Life on more than one occasion, and yes, we’ve asked a lot of questions and dug to find proof of that. We function as a neighborhood watch group, and always have.  We have never exceeded our authority in this, and leave the real police work to the real authorities.

Much of what has been posted is either heavily manipulated or simply convincingly synthesized.  These people have real material motives, and they’ve lost some substantial sums of real money (thousands of U.S. dollars) because they were banned from Second Life and lost assets.  It took them months to find a way to break into our wiki again, and this time it included hacking into  somebody’s account to do it.  They’re ready and willing to cross any line in front of them, legal or not. Don’t think for a minute that they’re not heavily motivated to doctor records before showing them to you.

The "Sephora Mafia" gloats over server attacks.

Who is behind the attacks on your wiki?

We have a pretty good idea who our attackers are, and we’ll show you some stories from Krypton Radio  to build a history for you so you can more clearly see what’s going on.

In the SL Universe thread, Robble Rubble explains how the entire original “wiki heist” was planned and executed – laid out exactly how he organized the original attack.

They’re also gloating about it – Tux Winkler, Dontspill McGinnis and others are sending harassing emails and Skype messages to League members about it, mostly to gloat about how exposed the League is; and, we’ve learned from insiders in their group that this “mission” has been planned from since before the fall of Red Square a couple of months back, and that Pixeleen Mistral knew the entire time that this project was underway and neither reported the plan to law enforcement authorities, nor exposed the plan on the Herald as journalism,  nor did anything to stop it.

10 January 2010, A group calling themselves “The Wrong Hands” at the direction of a person known in-world as Tizzers Foxchase, has an agent use social engineering to steal a partial copy of our wiki. This was done in response to one of our members interfering with a raiding party from the Woodbury University group while on its way to grief a Holocaust Survivor memorial in Second Life.
http://kryptonradio.com/2010/04/17/justice-leagues-brainiacwiki-stolen-the-aftermath/

20 April 2010, The Woodbury University group is perma-banned by Linden Lab.
http://kryptonradio.com/2010/04/20/woodbury-university-estate-destroyed-again/
http://kryptonradio.com/2010/04/28/linden-labs-woodbury-university-cleanup-effort-continues/

17 May 2010, Woodbury University group, hacks third party websites.
http://kryptonradio.com/2010/05/17/modular-systems-hacked/

22 September 2010, Major players in The Wrong Hands are banned from Second Life.
http://kryptonradio.com/2010/09/22/the-wrong-hands-gets-final-slap-from-linden-lab/

10 January 2011, Woodbury group attempts to sneak back into Second Life and is exposed.
http://kryptonradio.com/2011/01/10/woodbury-university-sneaks-back-into-second-life/

10 April 2011, A new major player in the Wrong Hands is identified as Tux Winkler, and his establishment of a spyware network in Second Life.
http://kryptonradio.com/2011/04/10/stark-reality-exclusive/
http://kryptonradio.com/2011/04/16/the-wrong-hands-lies-exposed/

04 July 2011, A story we ran, showing a possible connection between Anonymous/Lulzsec members and Woodbury University/The Wrong Hands.
http://kryptonradio.com/2011/07/04/dumpster-knights-the-true-face-of-hacktivism/

18 July 2011, Woodbury University’s 3rd incarnation is along with various The Wrong Hands members, banned from Second Life.
http://kryptonradio.com/2011/07/21/woodbury-banned-a-third-time-sl-bronies-take-a-hit/

20 July 2011, Sephora Mafia appears on Twitter and shows it is orchestrating the Distributed Denial of Service attacks on Krypton Radio, corresponding images mocking the Krypton Radio site being down appear on Tux Winkler’s website. Along with other twitter feeds confirming that Second Life servers were being hijacked to attack our server.
https://twitter.com/#!/SephoraMafia
https://sl4.me
https://twitter.com/#!/TRXLLVN
https://twitter.com/#!/DockingAdolf

25 July 2011, Linden Lab removes Tux Winkler from Second Life after they prove that he had indeed been operating a spy-ware network within SL, after a Linden Lab employee sees a story on Krypton Radio about our investigation uncovering it. He does his own investigation and finds that we were right, and brings the information to the Governance team.
http://kryptonradio.com/2011/07/25/krypton-radio-news-flash-the-last-of-the-wrong-hands-falls/
http://kryptonradio.com/2011/04/16/the-wrong-hands-lies-exposed/

04 Aug 2011, Sephora Mafia stops tweeting, and TheListSL on the same day, announces they are focusing their information exposing operations on the JLU/Krypton Radio. And also shows the first disclosure by listing the Second Life and Real names and private contact information of several of Krypton Radio staff members, along with birth-dates, home addresses, private email addresses, and phone numbers. This highly encourages identity theft, their site also shows other customers of Second Life who have their identities hacked and stolen in order to expose their private info.
https://twitter.com/#!/thelistsl
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDBK7g1JUrQ

10 Oct 2011, mass defections from the SL Universe threads begin, as people began figuring out that the IP address database was faked, and that warring factions within the griefer groups that had stolen the information in the first place were each releasing their own edited versions of the materials – it was becoming clear that they were manipulating the public for their own ends.  Major supporters withdrew in disgust as theListSL and its friends violated the privacy of more people than the JLU had been accused of doing by as much as eight to ten times in their efforts to get at us by any means possible.  A few stubborn trolls linger on, but the public by this time has turned away from the spectacle.

Even in the event that information is removed or changed on TheListSL blog, Google can easily roll back the blog to an earlier state to reveal the information that was deleted.

The source of the leaks started with massive violations of privacy of its own, and was already well established as a stalking site.

Why are they doing this?

The motivation is revenge – they don’t seem to understand that it isn’t just the League responding to their antisocial destructive behavior – it’s the entire community around them.  The League happens to be the most visible part of the efforts against them, so they picked us to strike out at.

This is a similar event to the recent difficulties San Francisco’s BART had – BART police shot a man  on the train who was wielding a knife, so Anonymous decided to punish them by hacking and defacing their web site, stealing their database and exposing information on thousands of BART users, et cetera.  Then they staged a real life protest in the BART station on August 15 to protest the practice of cell phone and text message lockdown in BART stations during potential riot situations.  In all, only twelve Anonymous actually showed up – they’re very ready to commit cyber crimes such as this, but they’re not so keen on actually getting caught at it.

In the BART case, just as with this one, the data exposed hurts the public rather than helps them.  It’s not being done in the name of the public good – it’s being done to hurt people, and specifically us, as much as they can. They know they’re in the wrong here.  That’s why the initial leak site has a banner across the top telling people how to find them in case Google bans them.

They complain bitterly that the League was unfairly targeting them on their own private sim over the past year – but we hasten to remind the reader that the very fact that they had one was a violation of the Terms of Service, as they had been told by Linden Lab to leave Second Life and never to return. This latest incarnation of Woodbury at Red Square was their third time trying to sneak back in, and dozens of citizens’ watch groups in addition to our own were trying to figure out how to get them to leave Second Life as they were instructed by Linden Lab legal.

A recent anti-League rally was attended almost purely by Woodbury ban-evasion alts.

The perpetrators’ ties to Anonymous are self-admitted, so it’s not hard to see what’s really going on.

An interesting side note, by the way, is that each time somebody buys one of those Guy Fawkes masks, they’re paying a royalty to Time Warner who owns the trademark, so they’re feeding the very establishment they’re protesting against.

What is your response to TheListSL and others claiming that the JLU are stalkers and building a database of real world information on Second Life users?

For one thing, that’s not even possible. We’ve seen the claims,  and it’s just not possible to build a database on every single Second Life resident. Have we ever at any point looked up real life information on anyone? Certainly – a few people we discovered were actual threats to other people’s safety in real life, but our sources were public, and found via Google.  No private information was  involved. Anything we found was kept for the sole purpose of turning over to law enforcement.  Our wiki no longer contains information of this nature – as we’ve passed it on to proper authorities, who are looking into the attacks on our server.

What do you even have a private wiki for?

We have the same rights anybody else does  to maintain a private wiki and put anything we want on it. We also are protected under certain laws and governed as members of the press and the media. As with any commercial news source, have the right to build a database for use as reference material.

But you work as a citizen’s watch group in Second Life, how exactly does that work, being members of the Press at the same time?

The Justice League started out over five years ago as a small group of friends who liked comic book heroes and what they stood for.  We began to be approached for help by SL residents because we looked like people who might be able to help.  In that situation you have two choices – you can either let it be somebody else’s problem, or you can step up.  We stepped up.  And we’ve been stepping up ever since.

The League began helping people with security matters at first; we slowly built relationships over time and discovered we had a talent for helping fellow residents on a myriad of issues. From fund-raising to helping investigate security matters, we built the JLU up to what it currently is. In 2009, Krypton Radio was launched to help coordinate security matters on a big event in Second Life. What we discovered was that the radio station would be perfect thing to help us share our love of comics and related media with fellow fans.

We started out as fellow comics fans and geeks, who decided to take a cool website and build it into an actual commercial venture. But we felt we couldn’t get away from our roots in SL, which included the Peacekeeping and trying to help people. So, for now we’ve maintained both and used Krypton Radio on occasion to help share news on major criminal activity in SL when it was appropriate.

Admittedly it’s a balancing act.  Sometimes we can’t publish what we know because it might interfere with corrective actions that might be being taken.  But we do our best.

Did we ever consider alt detection?

We’ll be honest here – yes.  When it was still allowed by Linden Lab, we considered implementing it.  However, we found it was so unreliable and produced so many false positives that it was really useless, and we never did implement a system that did this. No version of our in-world security system “Phantom Zone” has ever been able to scan IP addresses, and it never will.

But what about all the claims of massive privacy invasion?

There has been no massive privacy invasion. Most of the information we have on the citizens of Second Life consists of:

• Their avatar name
• Their avatar key number

In 99.95% of cases, this is all we have.  The remaining half of one percent are those where we have recorded some of the nasty things people do to each other – assault, sim crashing, intolerance based on religion, sexual preference or fandom rivalry, and theft being the main ones.  Occasionally this information must be handed over to real life law enforcement – but by this time, the person or persons involved has been banned from Second Life anyway.  No information beyond Terms of Service violations has ever been managed against legitimate citizens of Second Life, only people who have been removed from Second Life by the Linden Lab administrators in the first place.

Of course, in some cases we make notes on people who have exhibited philanthropy or play significant positive roles in the virtual society.  These people deserve special assistance when they request it, because they are usually trying to make the virtual world a better place, so the League likes to keep tabs on these important people as well.

Isn’t keeping records like that a form of harassment?

Linden Lab provides us all with an abuse reporting system with which to report trouble makers in Second Life.  It is not a violation of the Terms of Service to use the abuse reporting tool – nor is it a violation to make notes on pattern violation, and report that to Linden Lab.  Claims of harassment by people who are causing the trouble in the first place are a smoke screen to distract public attention from the real problem.

Additionally, every profile has a place for you to write down your personal notes on that person, so this is built into the Second Life experience.

Who is telling the truth in all this?

We can’t force you to take our side, or tell you what to believe. It’s up to you to decide for yourselves, however we do ask you to look at the tone of the information being presented. When you look at the people screaming and claiming that the JLU and Krypton Radio are stalking, and claiming its members are filing false abuse reports to get people we don’t like banned; you really have to look closely at that.  Before you accept the word of either side, look at their history and where they came from.

We assert that TheListSL has committed several felony acts in the breach of an SL member’s account, and then the hacking attack on our database. The information stolen was then posted for the purposes of stalking, harassment, and possibly identity theft. If you read over the various stories on Krypton Radio, you’ll pretty easily notice we do nothing like that.

If I wanted to join the League, how would I go about it?

The League hand picks its members for demonstrated leadership and a track record in the community for helping others.  If you wish to join, first, strive to be a friend and an inspiration to others, and allow them to inspire you in return.  Be a beacon of hope.  Help those less fortunate. Be practiced at it. Develop a reputation for it, and pay it forward. Those are the qualities the League looks for in its members, and we’ll notice.

What’s next for the League?

At this point in time, we have some good options. We refuse to be bullied out of Second Life, or off the net by a gaggle of griefers who think that exposing some of our private information will scare us. Krypton Radio and the League of Heroes will be around for many years to come. During these trying times, it’s our accomplishments that remind us why we’re still in Second Life – accomplishments like achieving gold level in the Relay For Life fund-raising event for the third year in a row, or our new resident welcome center in Taber, or the establishment of Krypton Radio as a reliable and respected news source for the Second Life community, or the creation of citizens’ watch groups such as GridWatch, and the Assistance Notification Network, or our upcoming release of one of the safest, most effective and yet most ToS-compliant security services out there, the Phantom Zone!

What’s next for the League?  We’re going to do we’re good at, and we’re going to keep moving forward!

Update

Stolen copies of the BrainiacWiki were distributed by several means, including MegaUpload.com. We recently learned that this site has been shut down by federal authorities, with seven people charged with conspiracy, and four being arrested.

Site owner Dotcom Ortmann,  chief marketing officer Finn Batao, and developer Bram van der Kolk were arrested in New Zealand on January 19, 2012.   The FBI worked with authorities from New Zealand, Hong Kong, the Netherlands, Canada, Germany, the UK and the Phillipines, and in concert with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement on the case.  The indictment charges that the “Mega conspiracy” has for more than five years operated websites that willfully distributed pirated movies, often before their theatrical release, and other illegal copies of copyrighted works, earning the company over $175 million in illegal profits through advertising revenue. Megaupload is also charged with money laundering by paying uploaders through an “uploader reward program,” and paying other companies to host the pirated content.

This is one of the sites to which the operators of the Alphaville Herald directed its users during its participation in the piracy of the stolen BrainiacWiki materials from an earlier “Wrong Hands” theft in 2010.

Links

• Wikipedia – The Big Lie
• CyberAngels.org – Coping with Cyberstalking
• Second Thoughts – Interview with GreenLantern Excelsior
• 3DBlogger – The Wrong Hands
• Second Thoughts – Ryokashi Revestal, Robble Rubble
• Oracle – Thinkquest page on propaganda definitions and techniques
• Ex-KGB Propaganda Expert Explains the Subversion Process
• Privacy Rights – what is real stalking, and what you can do about it
• Reporting Internet Crime

Incoming search terms:

• power rangers background
• power rangers mighty morphin
• power ranger vector mighty morphin
• mighty morphin power rangers masks

By Samantha Lowell

Saban Entertainment's Mighty Morphin Power Rangers

In a sobering development for fan creators, Linden Lab has removed Power Rangers merchandise from the Angel Grove Mall in Second Life and from the Marketplace Second Life website.

Acting in response to an August 13 notice of copyright infringement from Saban Entertainment, owners of the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers trademark, Linden Lab disabled merchandise bearing the Power Rangers name from Marketplace Second Life. Removals Linden, an avatar from Linden Lab’s legal department, inspected the Angel Grove sim, a popular Power Rangers roleplay site, and deleted vendors and signage bearing the Power Rangers trademarks from the Angel Grove shopping mall. Linden Lab’s terms of Usage for Marketplace Second Life forbid the selling of trademarked material.

In addition to the removal of vendors from the Angel Grove in-world mall during Removals Linden’s inspection, Second Life resident Hakkersszz Trenchcoat had all material bearing the Power Rangers and related names removed both from his inventory and delisted from Marketplace Second Life. Another Angel Grove resident’s account was briefly inspected by Linden Lab.

The news, coming after Linden Lab’s closures of the Battlestar Galactica sim and delisting merchandise and the removal of Star Trek vendors on the basis of intellectual property claims by Universal and Paramount , shocks fans who have sold media inspired wares in Second Life for years. However, the only material removed from Marketplace Second Life and in-world account inventory had the distinction of openly bearing the Power Rangers names, which were readily identified by Saban. Linden Lab, under national and international copyright and intellectual property laws, is legally obligated to respect the claims of intellectual property owners and acted immediately. No other sanctions were initiated by Saban or Linden Lab after the removal, and all affected resident accounts remain open and in good standing with Linden Lab.

Angel Grove sim remains open and continues to draw role players. Linden Lab is in something of a no-win position, being obliged to respect the legal rights of intellectual property owners and yet also acknowledging the large role media-inspired sales play in the virtual economy. Savvy media creators often avoid scrutiny-and Linden Lab’s restrictions-by rebranding their wares so as to avoid overt use of copyrighted names or sales images. Second Life residents familiar with media politics have speculated on the timing of these removals, which coincided with Universal’s heavy promotion and merchandising of Galactica’s TV revival, Paramount’s creation of Star Trek Online and Saban’s recent reaquisition and revitalization of the Power Rangers franchise. Whatever the motives for the sudden onset of media scrutiny, content creators in world and on internet marketplaces remain watchful for future such developments, hoping to remain overlooked in what they view as purely a labor of love by fandom.

-30-

A Correction:

Saban Entertainment does not own the intellectual property rights to My Little Ponies – this statement was made in error, and the Bronies are not at risk from Saban Entertainment.

Related Articles

• Krypton Radio – Universal Forces Battlestar Galactica Off Second Life
• Krypton Radio – Linden Lab Tightens Copyright and Trademark Rules

Incoming search terms:

• power rangers background
• power rangers mighty morphin
• power ranger vector mighty morphin
• mighty morphin power rangers masks

This weekend Second Life users from all over the country (and presumably from abroad as well) converged in the city of Oakland, California for the SLCC 2011 Second Life convention.  The convention runs between August 12-14, 2011 in Oakland, California.

Rod Humble, CEO of Linden Lab, gave the keynote address, which you can watch here.  Emphasized were changes in the way in which the Second Life platform and its user base are evolving, and the continuing focus on user privacy with the apparently conflicting goal of greater incorporation with social media.  Of particular interest were his comments that Second Life, far from circling the drain, is earning millions of dollars of profit a month, and is in a very good financial position.

People who wish to attend SLCC events in-world may attend for free at designated regions with SLCC in the region names.  Events are scheduled through Sunday afternoon.

Links

• The SLCC official web site

Incoming search terms:

• power rangers background
• power rangers mighty morphin
• power ranger vector mighty morphin
• mighty morphin power rangers masks

Kryton Radio Newswire

On August 9, 2011 – Cubey Terra, famed Second Life aircraft enthusiast and co-founder of the legendary Abbotts Aerodrome, announced that he would be closing the iconic airport on September 1st. However there is hope, as shortly after the announcement, long time SL resident Cheshyr Pontchartrain owner and proprietor of Novatech, stepped up to keep the region alive for the continued enjoyment of all of Second Life, but he needs your help!

Abbotts which was founded in 2004, is the second oldest virtual airfield in Second Life.

Original announcement from Cubey Terra:

Standing at the edge of the runway in Abbotts, I can hear the waves shushing against the supports underneath. A short ways away in the trees, a bird whistles a song that is suddenly overwhelmed by the roar of a 737 taking off. In the distance, a steady beat of helicopter blades rides the cool morning air. These are the sounds of Abbotts Aerodrome. I made this.

About seven and a half years ago, Apotheus Silverman and I closed our short-lived Zoe Airfield and bought up the majority of parcels in a new southern region called Abbotts.

We built a floating airport with an art deco theme, called it Abbotts Aerodrome, and welcomed pilots and aircraft makers.

In subsequent years, we expanded, I tore it down, rebuilt, tore it down again, and finally realized the structure that you see today — literally from a dream.

We held small aircraft building contests, huge exhibitions, and design competitions. We fought off attacks from sandbox griefers and two-bit newbies with cage guns. We’ve had Aerodrome members join our ranks, and others who faded away and left.

All of it was great fun. But as they say, all good things must come to an end. It’s the end for Abbotts Aerodrome, Second Life’s second oldest airport.

On September 1, 2011, we are closing the doors and grounding the aircraft for the last time. The lights will turn out and the aerodrome will go silent.

On that day, I’ll retreat to a corner of Abbotts to build a little cabin, where I’ll take up fishing and learn to make primfish sushi.

In an interview with Mr Pontchartrain, he stated that through donations he had raised at least L$176,000 and needed to raise an additional L$114,000; donations can be made at the Novatech main store on Gallifrey. Per the wishes of Cubey Terra, Abbotts will be renamed to reflect the change in ownership, but the airfield will stay at its current location which as Cheshyr says is still perfect for flying and boating. Additional details were not available at this time, as much is in transition for Abbotts, however with your generous help this famous landmark in Second Life will be around for a very long time to come.

To help fund the preservation, all Novatech items are on sale for 25% off.  Due to the way CasperVend works, you’ll have to pay full price, and the vendor will refund your 25%. This sale is good for all Novatech stores and affiliates.

You can visit Gallifrey to make donations, or purchase any item from a Novatech vendor.

Incoming search terms:

• power rangers background
• power rangers mighty morphin
• power ranger vector mighty morphin
• mighty morphin power rangers masks

Editorial by GreenLantern Excelsior

Here are my answers to some commonly asked questions about peacekeepers in the massively multiplayer online service Second Life.

Q: I’m tired of griefers and I want to fight back against them. Can I join your group?

A: If you want to attack griefers, then a peacekeeper group is the wrong group for you. Peacekeepers never attack anyone in non-combat areas, even if they are being attacked. To do so would be a violation of section 3 of the Community Standards. There’s a term for residents who attack someone in a non-combat area: they’re called “griefers.”

Q: Why do you guys always show up in big groups? Isn’t it “gaming the system” to write large numbers of Abuse Reports?

A: We write large numbers of Abuse Reports (ARs) because that’s what Linden Lab wants. The Second Life Knowledge Base guidelines on Filing an Abuse Report are very clear in stating that if many people are affected by a griefer’s actions, then they want to receive a larger number of ARs. The paragraph reads as follows:

File reports on any abuse you witness in addition to abuse that targets you personally. Not every Resident is aware of the abuse-reporting system or remembers to use it, so please help out your fellow Residents! Reports from multiple people underscore the seriousness of an incident.

Q: Okay, but why not let the people who are affected write the ARs? Why do you have to show up?

A: If everyone would write an AR when they were attacked by a griefer, there would be no need for peackeepers. The problem is that when residents are attacked, most of them TP to another place or just do nothing. They might think it’s a waste of time to write an AR, or they might not know how to do it. Peacekeepers respond to the location of the attack and write ARs very rapidly, then stay until Linden Lab removes the problem. Residents might be shaken up by some of the disturbing images the griefers use during their attacks, and they want to talk to someone about it. That’s why we’re there.

Q: Aren’t you guys just fascist Nazi Gestapo police wannabees? Who gave you permission to run around enforcing the Terms of Service?

A: Peacekeepers never take any enforcement actions. All we do is observe and report, the same thing that any resident can do. We’re like a Neighborhood Watch in Second Life. We send in the reports and the Lindens respond and do the enforcement. The only difference between us and a regular resident is that we are disciplined, and we train our members in how to write ARs. That and the spiffy spandex uniforms.

Q: What kind of training do peacekeepers get?

A: Training is the common thread that runs through all the peacekeeper groups. The first training we get is on the Second Life Terms of Service and Community Standards. We all had to acknowledge that we had read them when we signed up for SL, but we may not be well acquainted with them. This training helps members to identify violations. We train on how to patrol, what to do when we respond to a griefer attack, and how to file an Abuse Report. We also talk about the group’s code of ethics, which varies from group to group (but not much).

Q: I don’t see the big deal with a few porno cubes floating around. I think those are funny. People should be free to do what they want. Why do you guys have to stick your noses into someone else’s business anyway?

A: Some people may think porn or photos of mangled corpses are funny. The problem is that in most parts of Second Life these things are violations of the Terms of Service. There are people who might be deeply offended at seeing such things. A new resident who gets into the middle of something like that may decide that Second Life is a place to avoid. Peacekeepers perform a service by having these items removed from the grid. There is also the issue of the broken windows theory [1], stated as follows:

Social psychologists and police officers tend to agree that if a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken. This is as true in nice neighborhoods as in run-down ones. Window-breaking does not necessarily occur on a large scale because some areas are inhabited by determined window-breakers whereas others are populated by window-lovers; rather, one unrepaired broken window is a signal that no one cares, and so breaking more windows costs nothing.

Q: I [was assaulted by a Green Lantern] [saw Superman rez a porno cube] [was run over by Batman driving his batmobile]. Is that what peacekeepers do when they’re not writing ARs?

A: These people are almost certainly not peacekeepers. Anyone can buy a superhero costume and fly around in Second Life. You should check the person’s profile and see if they’re a member of one of the established peacekeeper groups. If they are, then please report their actions to one of the group’s leaders.

Q: Why do you bother writing ARs? Linden Lab never does anything about griefers anyway

A: That’s not true. We’ve seen responses within 5 minutes of the first AR being filed. The response time depends on how many Lindens are available to respond and what else they have going on at the same time. It is very rare to write ARs and not see a Linden response.

Q: How do you find out about griefer attacks so fast?

A: Communication! There are several peacekeeper groups in Second Life, and many members are in several different groups, so when a major griefer attack takes place, the group channels come to life. Also, we have the Assistance Notification Network (ANN) and GridWatch to help in getting the word out.

Q: What are Assistance Notification Network and GridWatch?

A: These two groups were created at about the same time, late 2007 and early 2008. The membership of ANN is made up of peacekeepers and regular residents who want to help, but may not want to join a peacekeeper group for whatever reason.  The membership of Gridwatch is made up entirely of peacekeepers who were already active in that role and were invited to join.

- 30 -

Links

[1] Broken Windows, Atlantic Monthly, March, 1982

About the Author

GreenLantern Excelsior has been an active participant in the Second Life online society since October 19, 2006, and is a member of the Justice League Unlimited / League of Heroes, owner and manager of the Assistance Notification Network and other citizen’s watch groups in Second Life.  He can be heard on Krypton Radio as “Captain Krypton” on his weekly show, “Sci Fi Roundup!”

Incoming search terms:

• power rangers background
• power rangers mighty morphin
• power ranger vector mighty morphin
• mighty morphin power rangers masks

Krypton Radio Newswire
article by Sumalee Capelo

On July 23, 2011, a suspected far-right gunman in police uniform killed at least 84 people in a ferocious attack on a youth summer camp of Norway’s ruling Labor party, hours after a bomb killed seven in Oslo. Witnesses said the gunman, identified by police as a 32-year-old Norwegian, moved across the island of Utoeya in a lake northwest of Oslo Friday, firing at young people who scattered in panic or tried to swim to safety.  91 adults and children lost their lives in this needless tragedy.

Norway Memorial in the Second Norway region of Second Life

Humanitarians of the Second Norway region in Linden Lab’s Second Life, the worlds largest user-created online virtual environment, have created a virtual memorial to honor those lost. If you have a Second Life account, you may visit it by following this  special link. The memorial was first  located inside the church on the region simulator, and has been receiving many visitors wishing to pay their respects for the lost. They also have candles available for lighting and you can also pay your respects by way of leaving a message viewable by other visitors.

The locals on the Second Norway sim are very nice, and there is a pub near by called Gennis where you can get to know them, I met many of them though while at the memorial reflecting on what happened to those lost.

UPDATE: The memorial has been moved, and now there is a Memorial Stone, and you can get there by going here. The memorial stone is set to a beautiful background, set on a marble base, and surrounded by candles, three roses, and two large candles on each side.  We extend our condolences to the families of the lost,  and wish for a world in which these things did not have to happen.

Memorial Stone, Second Norway, honoring the memory of those lost in the July 23 tragedy

- 30 -

Incoming search terms:

• power rangers background
• power rangers mighty morphin
• power ranger vector mighty morphin
• mighty morphin power rangers masks

Krypton Radio Newswire

Linden Lab pushes Second Life into something closer to a Web 2.0 social media platform with its new Facebook-like extension - which unfortunately lets anyone post anything to your profile by default.

San Francisco based Linden Lab (LL), creators of the virtual world Second Life (SL), have taken the next step in what appears to be their overall plans to merge SL with the social media craze that has been sweeping the internet for many years now. The public profiles of SL users have now been changed to work more like the well known Facebook wall, allowing other users to post comments on the profiles of anyone who has it turned on, and it’s turned on by default. Originally a users profile could only be seen by another user while logged-in and in-world, but as Linden Lab pushed its next-gen Viewer project, it moved the profiles to website based.

Called the Feed, SL users will be able to post to a Facebook style wall connected to the public profile of a Second Life customer. This can also be connected to a Twitter account which will allow people outside of SL to follow friends and family in-world. This started an uproar amongst many SL users, who did not want their SL based information being shared with search engines for anyone to find. Second Life rose to fame in its early years as being the place on the net where you could make your wildest fantasies come true in the 3D Landscape, and do so anonymously. Originally this helped draw customers by the thousands, but as the years wore on LL started seeing a decline amongst its user base, mainly having to do with dissatisfaction over LL’s customer service,  constant technical issues, and what appeared to be a general lack of interest in listening to its consumer base on the issues that the customers felt mattered most.

After what seemed like many years of feet dragging by LL, a massive lay-off of company staff ensued and general reorganization took place in 2010. The new smaller and focused teams of staff have helped in pushing out updates and upgrades to the Second Life platform on an almost weekly basis, but the overall experience has worsened for some. Linden Lab has for well over a year now been trying to move SL away from the image it portrayed as being an isolated world that only role-players and uber-geeks seemed to be aware of. Taking SL to the Facebook generation and allowing people to connect their SL accounts to services such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.

Some have hailed this move as a good step for SL to come out of its shell and join the social media lifestyle that many enjoy, opening the virtual world to people who may have never been aware of it before. Potentially earning many new customers in the process, but an equal amount of users have blasted the move as another way to allow people to stalk and harass other customers of the service; LL has installed the limited ability to turn off the sharing feature, but as many customers worry, not all new users of the service may realize that these features exist and will have trouble turning them off. This is particularly troubling for those SL customers who have to deal with other customers who stalk and harass them constantly, a fear is that a stalker may harass a SL user by vandalizing that person’s SL-Profile/Feed/Wall with obscene comments.

To adjust your privacy settings, log into your profile via https://my.secondlife.com/    Go to Settings, then Privacy, and you can set your Feed setting to Nobody. This will prevent anyone from using your Feed/Wall, and your other settings can only be set to a minimum of friends if you want to hide it from the general public. Also, the web-profiles work independently of your client, no matter what version you use. Using an older client will not disable this, you will still need to log into your web-profile in order to change your settings.

Through various blog posts and individual employees willing to talk, Linden Lab continues to claim that it takes all feedback from its customers seriously and is indeed listening. Is this just standard Public Relations hype, or is LL really listening? Only time will tell!

Stay tuned to Krypton Radio for further updates!

Incoming search terms:

• power rangers background
• power rangers mighty morphin
• power ranger vector mighty morphin
• mighty morphin power rangers masks

Krypton Radio Newswire - July 25, 2011

The Wrong Hands Logo. Second Life Citizens are advised to be aware of where you see this symbol in-world and report its use to the proper authorities. By this we mean Linden Labs, of course.

Tux Winkler, the last member of the notorious Wrong Hands group to retain his original account, was deleted from Second Life  at approximately 9:30 this morning, for egregious violations of  the Second Life Term of Service .  With the loss of their sims Red Square and Revolution, the power of the Wrong Hands over the good people of Second Life is broken.

The Wrong Hands was a group virtually synonymous with that of the now banned Woodbury University group.  The group’s leader pro tem, Tux Winkler, was responsible for a spyware stalking network which targeted peacekeepers, but then broadened its scope to include anyone Tux Winkler didn’t happen to like.

The Wrong Hands group was also responsible for the theft of the Justice League Unlimited’s BrainiacWiki in January of 2010, a move originally touted as whistle-blowing, but their true griefer gang roots were exposed over time.

Activities of Woodbury University, an earlier related group called the Patriotic Nigras, and most recently The Wrong Hands have been strongly supported and sustained by Mark P. McCahill and Peter Ludlow of the Alphaville Herald, presumably to benefit their own academic work studying something they call “Hacktivism”.

The last remaining Wrong Hands base was located in Second Life in the southwest corner of the region known as  Superville.  Built and maintained by Tux Winkler, remained in place for a few hours, but by late afternoon was wiped clean and placed back into the pool of Linden owned property for resale.

On his blog, Winkler claims to have simply shut down his account abruptly and without warning; however, all his known alts are also missing from search, as well as one of the accounts of his wife Tuxette Magic (other of her alts remain untouched). The scripts used in his spyware stalking system have also been blacklisted and cannot be redeployed, effectively killing the system.

The action against Winkler was taken by the Lindens who disassembled some of his devices, verified what they did and how they worked and who Winkler was tracking, and based the ban on their findings.

Winkler is now a fugitive and unwelcome in Second Life.  Merely logging on for him is now a ToS violation.  The public is advised to remain vigilant, and report any sightings of Tux Winkler alternate accounts to the Lindens via abuse reporting.

Links

• Krypton Radio – Woodbury Banned a Third Time, SL Bronies Take A Hit
• Krypton Radio – The Wrong Hands, Lies Exposed
• Krypton Radio – The Wrong Hands Spies On You
• Krypton Radio – Woodbury University Sneaks Back Into Second Life

  - 30 -

Incoming search terms:

• power rangers background
• power rangers mighty morphin
• power ranger vector mighty morphin
• mighty morphin power rangers masks

It’s been a busy week for the folks at Krypton Radio, but we didn’t forget about the Friday edition of Weekly Artist Spotlight! Let’s get the weekend going with some music, and there’s no better way that we know of than some hard rock and ease on into some instrumental.

You’ve kicked off your shoes and are ready to relax right? Good!

TARSHA

TARSHA is the LA based hard rock band featuring lead vocalist Seann Nicols (Tarsha), guitarist Jimmy Douglas, bassist Patrick Morgan, and drummer Kyle Cunningham. Tarsha has been described as “one of the best artists ever at exorcising demons in bursts of creative genius.” (Pitriff.com)

Tarsha released the self-titled ASYLUM EP in 2005. The EP featured the songs Asylum, Upside Down, and You Are Everything, all of which received critical acclaim, garnering seven international songwriting awards from Billboard, Independent Music Awards, and Song of the Year.

In May 2005, Tarsha became the lead singer of Adler’s Appetite, the band led by original Guns N’ Roses drummer Steven Adler. Tarsha toured internationally with Adler’s Appetite through 2006.

In 2007, Tarsha independently released his first full-length album “Prophecies”, which became a worldwide Internet radio hit, reaching No. 2 and remaining on the Live 365 Rock Top 30 chart for 77 weeks.

Tarsha released his sophomore album “Divine Universe” in 2008.

After completing a U.S. tour singing for Adler’s Appetite again in 2009, Tarsha independently released “The Singles EP”, complete with a music video for the song “Second Life”.

Tarsha began performing live with his original band TARSHA in 2009. The band performed at The Viper Room, The Whisky A Go Go, and The Roxy, landing a monthly residency at The House of Blues Sunset Strip in direct support for Steel Panther (Metal Skool).

Tarsha also sang for the Phoenix, Arizona based hard rock band ICON. Tarsha made his first appearance with ICON at the Rocklahoma festival in July 2009 in Pryor, Oklahoma and later performed with the band in their hometown, opening for Queensryche at The Orpheum Theater.

Tarsha also appears on the latest Liberty N’ Justice album “Light It Up”, released on Retroactive Records Jan. 19th 2010, performing lead vocals on the original song Uncle Sam, which also features bassist Jeff Pilson of Dokken/Foreigner.

http://www.TarshaRock.com/

Follow Tarsha on: Twitter and Facebook

Phil Holland

And now for our second feature of the day, we’ll take a look at some professional art design and music production. One such fellow is Mr Holland, he is one of those Hollywood legends you don’t normally hear about, one of those unsung heroes of the city that has produced some of the best that has graced the silver screen. Aside from his photography and islustrated works, Phil has a musical album out which is free to download from his website, we very highly recommend it!

“Released in February 2008, DIN represents a two year instrumental journey. Each song was inspired by chaotic and peaceful defining moments in that span of time. “

Phil Holland was born and raised in Southern California. He took an interest in art, science, and entertainment at a very young age. After graduating high school he decided to redirect his interests away from his scienctific career aspirations and education to focus on his creative desires. Determined to improve upon his abilities, for the next few years he was drawing and studying around two to sixteen hours a day. Striving to understand more about color, composition, anatomy, and art history.

From 1999 through 2010 he was employed at Rhythm and Hues Studios. While there he worked on over 100 features films. For the first 5 years of his career he was primarily utilized as a Digital Colorist. Towards the second half of his career at R&H he served more along the lines of a Technical Cinematographer, Still Photographer, and VFX/Color Consultant. Titled as a “Digital Imaging Specialist” he has produced unique solutions to many of the problems in the rapidly changing world of visual effects and cinematography at the studio.

Phil also has a rewarding and active freelance career. He has provided conceptual illustration, matte painting, still photography, color correction/grading, and commercial photography on motion pictures, video games, the music industry, and print for numerous projects.

Currently he is enjoying creating fine art and focusing his professional photographic efforts towards more of a fashion/celebrity/editorial direction. Phil is also focusing a lot of energy towards his cinematography career and has a unique perspective on film making from his work in pre-production, being in front of the camera, behind the camera, post production, and drawing on extensive on set experience.

In his spare time Phil enjoys spending time with friends, drawing, creating music, exploring nature, learning, teaching, and creating personal works.

http://www.ArtByPhil.com

Follow on Phil on: Twitter and Check out The Art Department!

DIN

Weekly Artist Spotlight, is Krypton Radio’s bi-weekly feature, to help raise awarness of the artists who you may not have heard about through mainstream media. All content used in Weekly Artist Spotlight, is used from publicly available sources, and is used to promote the artists we spotlight.

Incoming search terms:

• power rangers background
• power rangers mighty morphin
• power ranger vector mighty morphin
• mighty morphin power rangers masks

Krypton Radio Newswire 

This article has been updated with new information from Rembrandt Flux, unfortunate owner of the deleted regions of Bronyville, Derpy and GameTime.

The griefing organization known collectively as Woodbury University

has for the third and hopefully final time been kicked from Second Life.

Their current incarnation was headquartered in the regions of Red Square and Revolution, which were opened to the public on April 22, 2011. Openly brandishing a Soviet Russian theme and playing host to the The Wrong Hands (TWH), their continued existence was one of the worst kept secrets on the grid. Nearly all the original Woodbury members had returned using ban evasion alts; visitors to the Woodbury regions were forbidden to openly speak the phrase “Woodbury University” for fear of attracting the attention of the Second Life administrators. This was despite the fact that the group had even made a machinima style video to clearly state that they had returned to SL.

The situation was finally rectified when, in the early hours of July 18, 2011, it all came to an abrupt end. These two regions were removed from the grid along with their owner Atlas SaintLouis, the Woodbury / Wrong Hands ban evasion alts Twinkie Swizzle (Tizzers Foxchase) and Overbrain Unplugged (Intlibber Brautigan).

Also removed were the regions along with Bronyville, Derpy and GameTime, each owned by Rembrandt Flux, who, far from being some new griefer king, had apparently gotten caught in the crossfire between Linden Lab and the Woodbury refugees owing to the high number of Woodbury in the Bronies groups.  According to Flux, he had no efficient means of doing in-depth background checks, going instead on the quality of the example work submitted as to whether or not content creators would be hired.  The two facts that he was paying them, with thousands of dollars changing hands,  and that so many were Wrong Hands / Woodbury may have contributed to his ban.

Linden Lab acting on information submitted by the Peacekeeping community and other sources, reviewed the SL group The Wrong Hands for materials which could be used for disruption of Second Life services. This action was prompted by Tux Winkler, a known leader in The Wrong Hands, who had supplied images of the TWH groups to Justice League members in an attempt to prove that he had not sent a group notice (which was supposedly leaked to Peacekeeper groups) instructing his fellow TWH members on the availability of new a copybot client.  The authenticy of the leaked notice was never established.

The Wrong Hands, main group showing two notices sent by members. Twinkie Swizzle and Economic Engineer

The image as shown at right (provided by Tux Winkler), features a group notice sent by now banned TWH member Twinkie Swizzle. The notice contained an attachment which was felt could be an object or device to be used to grief with.

While we will never know if the object was actually a griefing device, it is also possible that Linden Lab removed Twinkie Swizzle for ban evasion, his original account Tizzers Foxchase was removed during the banishment of the second incarnation of Woodbury. The exact reason for the removal of Atlas Saintlouis the owner of Red Square and Revolution, is unknown but suspected to be related to the material used in The Wrong Hands group.

The Bronies Plight

The Bronies are an internet phenomenon, born of a fandom surrounding the My Little Ponies television show. Bronies is a My Little Pony for guys fandom, born of the 4Chan.com partly as a reaction to all the negativity of the /b/tard chan boards. Later invited to form their own chan board and leave 4Chan alone, which they did at http://ponychan.net

The Bronies group in Second Life was founded by Twinkie Swizzle, a known alt of the banned Tizzers Foxchase of Woodbury University / The Wrong Hands. And Overbrain Unplugged, a known alt of the banned IntLibber Brautigan of the same two groups.

(The reader should note that most of the accounts discussed in this article are of avatars now banned; discussion of banned alt accounts where both accounts are banned does not constitute Disclosure, and that this is a third party web site – the Linden Lab Terms of Service prohibiting Disclosure in Second Life do not apply here.)

Curly Fride, a supplier of Bronies avatars,  claims to have met the two in April of 2011, stating that he was invited by the pair to join them in a new Bronies-oriented venture.  Surprisingly, neither Fride nor a significant number of the Bronies who would later join the group realized exactly who Twinkie Swizzle and Overbrain Unplugged really were.  Twinkie and Overbrain supplied organization and funding, whereas it would be Curly Fride who supplied the My Little Pony avatars themselves, without which the community could not flourish.

The group enjoyed explosive growth between April and July of 2011.  As an open enrollment group and because of its saccharine, squeaky clean public face, it became popular amongst griefers to join. It’s important to note, that the Bronies group is NOT a griefing group by nature, it is simply a common practice for some griefers to find large open enrollment groups with certain themes or memes they enjoy, and join to try to corrupt the group for their own purposes. While the group was ironically founded by a known griefer it was policed very heavily by its management.

The group stayed peaceful and reasonably trouble free most times, and we should also note that out of the group of 3000+ good members, only a small handful (10-20 if that) were actually considered possible griefers.

The chain of events is a little difficult to follow, but piecing together what we’ve been told from various sources, here is what apparently happened:

The Woodbury / Wrong Hands Connection

Tizzers Foxchase (Twinkie Swizzle) had apparently gotten bored with the stagnant and politically unsuccessful  Wrong Hands and Woodbury University groups and decided to try something new.  He convinced Intlibber Brautigan (Overbrain Unplugged) to join him.  Seeing an opportunity, they invited Curly Fride to join them and created the new Bronyville estate in April, with a second sim called Derpy added two months later.

Curly Fride’s Second Life account login information was apparently either phished or socially engineered to acquire the password sometime prior to July 3rd. Fride’s in-world funds were spent buying troll gifts for various people, with the list of recipients conforming in general to a list of people not well liked in Woodbury University circles.

Rumors flew, one of them being that his account had been hacked by Foxchase, or somebody Foxchase knew, or somebody he had put up to the task.  Another rumor says that Fride tried to have his two co-owners removed from the Bronies and Bronies land administration groups via support ticket based on this suspicion.  The Bronyville management response was to ban Fride from the Bronyville estate.  Within a day, Fride was no longer listed as an owner of these groups, but by this time both Twinkie Swizzle and Overbrain Unplugged had lost their accounts, and the regions of Bronyville and Derpy were taken offline.

Far from being disconnected or detached from the two griefing groups Woodbury University and The Wrong Hands, Tizzers and IntLibber retained their ties to these groups.  It cannot be a coincidence, therefore that Atlas Saintlouis, the money figure enabling the existence of Red Square and Revolution, lost his account on the same day that Twinkie Swizzle and Overbrain Unplugged also vanished.

According to a reliable anonymous source, following the destruction of Red Square and Revolution, a stream of griefer alts made their appearances at Superville at Tux Winkler’s Wrong Hands base all morning.

Persons of note present included :

• Alexy Romanov
• Dicking Highwater (dicking.highwater)  (“Docking”, now banned)
• samuels Aboubakar (samuels.aboubakar)
• Doctor Yootz (dimitrij)
• Narika Niosaki
• Queen Korpov
• Krookers
• Crafty Waxen
• Spin Dash
• Pixeleen Mistral
• PurgeThis Spot
• Tux Winkler

Kalel Venkman had the opportunity to interview Curly Fride on the evening of July 19, mere hours after the five regions of Bronyville, GameTime, Derpy, Red Square, and Revolution were taken offline and seven of the core members of the Wrong Hands were banned.  Here is what transpired :

[19:56] Kal-El (kalel.venkman): Hi, Curly.
[19:56] Curly (curly.fride): hey
[19:57] Kal-El (kalel.venkman): I heard about what happened.  Did you have any advance warning that the sim was going offline?
[19:57] Curly (curly.fride): no i didn’t
[19:57] Kal-El (kalel.venkman): This really sucks.
[19:58] Kal-El (kalel.venkman): Did you have any idea Overbrain and Twinkie were involved in subversive activities elsewhere?
[19:58] Curly (curly.fride): no I didn’t
[19:59] Kal-El (kalel.venkman): I should back up a little – I’m asking questions because in addition to being Justice League, we also have a news outlet called Krypton Radio.
[19:59] Kal-El (kalel.venkman): If you don’t want to answer questions, I’ll respect your privacy.
[20:00] Kal-El (kalel.venkman): I should have said that straight up, I’m  sorry I didn’t do that first thing.  Are you okay with answering questions?
[20:01] Kal-El (kalel.venkman): An awful lot of Bronies got caught in the crossfire on this, and it sounds like that included you.
[20:03] Kal-El (kalel.venkman): For what it’s worth, I thought the Bronies idea was really something special.
[20:03] Kal-El (kalel.venkman): And I hope you can regroup.
[20:11] Curly (curly.fride): me too
[20:17] Kal-El (kalel.venkman): You must have known Twinkie and Overbrain for some time before joining them in this venture.
[20:20] Curly (curly.fride): nope
[20:21] Curly (curly.fride): I built the brony avatar and was approached by twinkie
[20:21] Curly (curly.fride): Twinkie pretty much said “Hey, we’re setting up a sim, wanna come?”
[20:21] Kal-El (kalel.venkman): So -he- found -you-.
[20:21] Kal-El (kalel.venkman): You had something he needed and couldn’t make himself.
[20:21] Curly (curly.fride): pretty much
[20:22] Kal-El (kalel.venkman): How long ago was this, would you say?  It hasn’t been that long and the Bronies have been wildly popular and grew quickly.
[20:23] Curly (curly.fride): april
[20:23] Kal-El (kalel.venkman): I’ve seen the Brony avatar, by the way, it’s very impressive.
[20:23] Curly (curly.fride): thanks
[20:23] Kal-El (kalel.venkman): Moves very well, and it’s spot on model.
[20:23] Curly (curly.fride): I’m not as happy with it as everyone else is
[20:23] Kal-El (kalel.venkman): The creator always sees the flaws no one else sees.
[20:24] Kal-El (kalel.venkman): Did you have any suspicions as things went on that something wasn’t quite right with Twinkie and Overbrain?  Did they ever refer to their past?
[20:25] Curly (curly.fride): no, I heard rumors that they were part of woodbury
[20:25] Curly (curly.fride): And interestingly enough, the woodbury sims went down today too
[20:26] Kal-El (kalel.venkman): They were not only part of Woodbury, they pretty much WERE Woodbury.  They ran the place.
[20:27] Kal-El (kalel.venkman): When Overbrain was taken out, they took out Atlas SaintLouis too, so Red Square, Revolution, Bronyville and Derpy all went down at once.
[20:27] Kal-El (kalel.venkman): So you were not aware that Twinkie Swizzle was Tizzers Foxchase?
[20:28] Kal-El (kalel.venkman): I’m guessing no.
[20:32] Curly (curly.fride): No, I wasn’t
[20:32] Curly (curly.fride): I didn’t know
[20:33] Kal-El (kalel.venkman): I’m guessing Overbrain Unplugged didn’t tell you he was IntLibber Brautigan either.
[20:33] Curly (curly.fride): nope
[20:34] Kal-El (kalel.venkman): His estate collapsed last year due to financial  reasons – though he was also  running his own in-world securities exchange, the oversight being provided by his own oversight committee.
[20:35] Kal-El (kalel.venkman): If you Google him, there’s a lot of stuff out there on him.  I don’t know how much is true, and I don’t care to speculate particularly.
[20:38] Kal-El (kalel.venkman): Oh, one last thing – what is it that you think appeals to people about the Bronies, and what appeals to you about Bronies specifically?
[20:41] Curly (curly.fride): I think there’s appeal in the moralities that the ponies portray, and that they aren’t portrayed right out in front of you like alot of things in TV are
[20:41] Curly (curly.fride): it’s hard to say though
[20:42] Kal-El (kalel.venkman): The Ponies represent a sort of social ideal?
[20:42] Curly (curly.fride): in some ways, yes
[20:42] Curly (curly.fride): A certain form of innocence and happiness that you don’t see very often
[20:43] Curly (curly.fride): That was my dream as well
[20:43] Curly (curly.fride): I made the pony avatars to bring people together, I never charged any money for them
[20:44] Kal-El (kalel.venkman): I didn’t know that.  Wow.

The Bronies groups’ administration continue to talk amongst themselves and with Linden Lab about “fixing the money situation” that they believe caused the loss of their themed estate.  However,  Atlas SaintLouis, Twinkie Swizzle and Overbrain Unplugged were banned within minutes of one another and all five regions taken offline at once.  If they were truly banned for doing what they’ve been routinely observed doing in the past, then no recovery of Bronyville will be possible, and as most of the builds were created and owned by Twinkie Swizzle, much of what made Bronyville what it was will not be recoverable.

Even so, the Bronies, led in part by Atheron Alter of Lamp and DarthBlueAfro Cummings of Woodbury University, seem optimistic about their chances of restoring their estate in some fashion.

Update:  Within mere days, a new region was created called “Bronytown” which lies two region’s widths north of the original Bronyville location.  Should Bronyville and Derpy be restored, they would be able to resume their original positions on the grid map.

Region and Account Destruction Synchronous with FBI Raids on Anonymous Across the Country

Simultaneous with the third destruction of Woodbury were American FBI raids on sixteen Anonymous meme-using hackers in a nationwide sweep this morning, on the same day.

Recent arrests have been taking place around the world in a new global crackdown on Anonymous and anything resembling it.  Dutch authorities arrested four individuals. British authorities arrested a 16 year old going by the handle “TFlow”, and American authorities made sixteen arrests from approximately 30 to 40 warrants.  This means that there are still some 14 to 24 warrants still unserved in the United States alone, and we can presume that at least some are still open.

These events would not have been worth the mention had the precise synchronicity not been so striking. The best we can do, however, is wonder at whether there is a connection.

Closing thoughts

The first mass ban of Woodbury University took place June 23, 2007.  The second took place April 20, 2010.  Now that Woodbury has been mass banned three times, with a total loss of ten regions, perhaps they’ll finally decide to seek out greener pastures – while the Bronies, largely victims in the Wrong Hands crossfire, simply seek to restore the ones they already had.

Update – July 22, 2011

Newly minted alts of the Wrong Hands are warning certain residents not to interfere with the distribution of Bronies avatars.  The Wrong Hands has a spyware system implemented in-world that is used to track the movements of people they don’t like – just peacekeepers at first, but this was expanded to included anybody Tux Winkler had a problem with.  As the general tone from The Wrong Hands towards the Bronies is one of disdain, citizens are advised not to accept Bronies avatars unless they come directly from Curly Fride.

Links

• Equestria Forums – Bronies Invade Second Life
• SL Newser – Bronyville in Trouble
• Krypton Radio – Second Life Security Warning: “Wrong Hands” Onyx Viewer Release Notice Intercepted
• Krypton Radio -The Wrong Hands: Lies Exposed

• FBI Arrests 14 People Suspected of Anonymous Affiliation, Participation in DDOS Attacks

• Fox News – FBI Search Warrants , Nationwide Hunt for Anonymous
• Fox News – FBI Raids Homes of Suspected Anonymous Hackers
• Fox News – Leading LulzSec Hacker Arrested in London

Comparisions between Twinkie/Tizzer’s Woodbury Documentation & Bronies group information: (Again, we know full well that the Bronies is not a griefing group, but we wanted to show you further information to say we feel the Bronies got the raw end of the deal. Twinkie Swizzle’s past actions cost them a excellent place to hang-out and enjoy their fandom.)

The good:
This was the Bronyville Code of Conduct, written by Curly Fride and distributed on July 8, 2011:

Welcome to Bronyville! While you are here, you are part of our little community. Because of this, we have a few simple rules for you to follow, outlined by the Six Elements of Harmony.

~~~Honesty~~~
Feel free to speak whatever’s on your mind, but please do so in a respectful manner. We won’t fuss over foul language in the course of normal conversation, but please don’t verbally harass anypony. This includes text chat, voice chat, sounds, and gestures.

~~~Kindness~~~
Bronyville is not a warzone. You can carry a weapon as an accessory, but please detach any scripted or “unsheathed” weapons.

~~~Generosity~~~
Please don’t use up all the sim resources with laggy scripts, object-spammers, sound spam and particle-spam.

~~~Magic~~~
Public displays of affection such as hugging and kissing and snuggling are alright as long as you keep it PG-13. If you want to take it further, please keep it private. Please detach any mature attachments, even if they are set turn transparent.

~~~Loyalty~~~
Be respectful of the Moderators and Admins, listen to their requests. They volunteer their personal time to be here and they work very hard to keep Bronyville safe, and secure from all the ghosties that try to make us frown.

~~~Laughter~~~
The most important element of all… You’ve gotta Have fun!

Some other rules to keep in mind:
~~Official Bronyville Moderators have a “Royal Guard” tag.
~Griefers will be immediately ejected and banned from Bronyville. ABUSE REPORTS will be filed on anyone who is griefing.
~Bronyville isn’t an advertisement tool. Please clear with a Moderator before you start handing out landmarks and shouting about the new club or shop you just opened.
~Bronyville isn’t a store. Please clear with a Moderator
~Please, no requests for money. Some of the best things in Second Life are FREE! But if you really need money so bad, you can upgrade to Premium and get a weekly check, or just toss about 15 bucks into SL.
~Bronyville isn’t “Hiring.” Our entire staff consists ONLY of volunteers and they don’t get paid for their invaluable services.
~Keep Bronyville clean. If you rez something, pick up after yourself. It’s easier to find something in your Inventory where you expect it than it is to find in your Lost And Found.
~Please keep your Religion and Politics out of Bronyville. Nothing divides a community faster than a religious feud.
~Only report things you know for fact to be true to moderators. You get in trouble with the Bronyville Guards for dialing 911 and lying, so don’t do it!

Some of our Moderator Rights
~If a moderator sends you an IM warning and you do not comply, the Moderator reserves the right to Eject you from Bronyville. If you return and still do not comply with the moderator’s request, you may be banned.
~Moderators reserve the right to immediately eject and ban griefers.
~Moderators reserve the right to keep and transfer chat logs for rule-enforcement purposes.
~Moderators reserve the right to immediately eject and ban avatars with offensive or abusive names.
~Moderators reserve the right to use personal discretion in regards to language rule enforcement.
~Our security system logs everyone who enters the sim and their use of Sim Resources. Moderators reserve the right to use this data for security purposes.

If you have any questions, feel free to IM one of our staff members, We’ll be more than happy to assist you.
——————————————————————————————————————————-

Compare this to Woodbury University’s “Bro Code”, penned by Tizzers Foxchase:
(language warning, the following contains terms readers may find offensive, it is presented uncensored for completeness sake)

The bad:

The Ethos of Woodbury (AKA THE BRO CODE)

……………….__
…………./´¯/‘…’/´¯¯`·¸
………./‘/…/…./……./¨¯\
……..(’(…´…´…. ¯~/‘…’)
………\……………..‘…../
……….’’…\………. _.·´
…………\…………..(
BRO FIST

—– How not to suck at being at Woodbury moderator —–

1. Woodbury exists as an open environment where any Second Life avatar is free to express
themselves in a manner which would typically GET YOUR ASS SACKED in any pubbie sim.

2. As a Woodbury SS / Sandbox Gestapo / FIC / Goderator, you are here to make Woodbury a better place for the members. We NEVER EVER EVER abuse ban/eject powers on other Woodbury Members. THIS IS A HUGE VIOLATION OF THE BRO CODE.

3. You have been given powers in the group because you have proven yourself to not suck. Please strive to maintain this.

4. There are only two reason we should EVER ban an individual from our sim:
A. This person is crashing the sim.
B. This person has admitted to abuse reporting Woodbury members.

Banning somebody because they successfully trolled you is never okay. Grow a pair fgt.

5. The road to becoming a Woodbury Mod is easier than you may think. Actively contributing
to the group, building things, and recruiting is automatic promotion to SS/Gestapo. FIC is given to those that have gone above and beyond the call of duty. Goderator is reserved for founding members and individuals who become RL students at Woodbury University in Burbank, California.

—– How not to suck at being a Woodbury member —–

1. Because of the open-ended nature of our sim and group, you will be fucked with. You will be
trolled. You will be called names and treated like shit. Get over it. TROLL BACK HARDER. Welcome
to Woodbury.

2. Being openly furry is just asking for it. You have been warned.

Most importantly, have fun. Blow things up, be the horrible monster you really are.

Woodbury University: Not quite your typical Second Life experience.

-Tizzers

 

Update – July 26, 2011

Because Linden Lab will not read the protests of people who have lost their accounts, under the circumstances, Kalel Venkman felt compelled to speak on Rembrandt Flux’s behalf, and posted Service Ticket 01177676, the text of which is as follows (including the comments, since the ticket text length was too short to allow for the entire filing to be submitted in one pass):

================================================
Regions Down:  Bronyville, Derpy and GametimeThese regions belonged to Rembrandt Flux.  He was banned because of
his deep and ongoing association with several members of the Wrong
Hands and Woodbury University, specifically over their association
with the Bronies group.It is my firm, heartfelt belief that Rembrandt Flux had no clear idea
that he was hiring some of the most notorious people in Second Life to
work on his regions, and that he had no proper means of vetting these
people during the hiring process other than the submission of examples
of their work, which they provided.Yes, some of the members of the Bronies group received a large number
of abuse reports over several months.No, it was not the Bronies themselves that were the problem.  It was
Woodbury that had quietly hoodwinked Rembrandt Flux and ended up
making him pay for their own transgressions.I am Kalel Venkman.  After this much time, you’ve probably heard of
me.  I’m the guy that runs the citizen’s watch organization known as
the Justice League Unlimited in Second Life.  My team helped Linden
Lab with the griefer wars of 2007-2008, when the Patriotic Nigras were
so active.  And my team played a role in providing Linden Lab with
enough information about the activities of Woodbury University and The
Wrong Hands to get these people taken off the grid, en masse, three
times now.  You have accepted my word and the word of my team on these
matters for over five years.I am about as uptight about rule following and seeing justice served
as anybody on the grid.

Please.

Accept my word now when I say that I believe that Rembrandt Flux
carries no malice toward anyone, facilitated no griefing in-world, was
about the furthest thing possible from a griefer king-pin that it is
possible to be, and deserves to have his account – and his lands -
restored.

If there is someone in specific that I should speak to about this
decision in the hopes of getting it reversed, I would like to be put
in contact with that person so that I may plead Rembrandt Flux’s case.

Thank you.

- Kalel Venkman

 

 

 

 

 

Stay tuned to Krypton Radio for further information and updates on this story.

Incoming search terms:

• power rangers background
• power rangers mighty morphin
• power ranger vector mighty morphin
• mighty morphin power rangers masks

Krypton Radio Newswire

If you receive an email to “confirm” your account in the Second Life Marketplace, take a very close look at the URL:

“http://maketplacesecondlife.110mb.com/login.htm”

Notice that the URL is not only misspelled but is actually part of the “110mb.com” Domain.

DONT OPEN IT, DONT ANSWER IT.  This is a phishing attempt to collect your account login information.  If you go to this web site you are invited to fill out your avatar name and password, and if you really are a vendor, you’ll lose control of your own business as well as your account.

Similarly to other online services, Linden Lab does not send out these kinds of notices via email.  This is not just a Second Life prank, this is illegal, and a felony.  You can do your part by reporting the incident directly to the  Federal Bureau of Investigation.

You can also report it to the United States Computer Emergency Readiness Team which tracks phishing scams and helps people protect themselves from these kinds of attacks.

UPDATE – July 18, 2011

Another false Marketplace link has been discovered: http://h1.ripway.com/maketplacesecondlif/login.php

This link was discovered when someone had used it and then found their account breached by the person or persons running the fake Second Life website. The victim is now in a battle to recover well over a thousand U.S dollars that had been fraudulently charged via her banking information that was hooked to her SL account.

It is important to only log in to the SL website via the main address http://www.SecondLife.com, or if you are logging directly to the SL Marketplace, use https://marketplace.secondlife.com/    Those are the official website addresses, use no other.

If you have further information which can help Linden Lab and proper authorities battle these fake SL websites, report the websites using the links provided to the FBI and the Emergency Readiness Team. Also send any information you have on fraudulent SL websites to: security(at)lindenlab.com

Incoming search terms:

• power rangers background
• power rangers mighty morphin
• power ranger vector mighty morphin
• mighty morphin power rangers masks

Relay For Life of Second Life celebrates 7th year and accomplishment of $1Million Dollars Raised as main event kicks off July 16.

The American Cancer Society‘s Relay For Life of Second Life (RFL of SL), celebrates its 7th year of fundraising efforts within the virtual world of Second Life. Also known as (SL), Second Life has allowed people from around the world to enjoy and participate in the efforts to help raise funds for the American based charity organization, from the comfort of their own homes. To date the RFL of SL has raised an impressive $1Million, $326,000 of it collected during the days leading up to the start of the 2011 Relay. While raising that amount of money is not unheard of, it’s a significant achievement for a virtual society. This has perhaps been one of the most unique aspects of internet culture in the approach to fundraising, allowing people to use virtual 3D characters which they create from a base model and then customize to suit their fancy. Linden Research, Inc. (Linden Lab/LL) which owns and operates the virtual world of Second Life, has sponsored the American Cancer Society (ACS) for over seven years now in SL.

Through the advertising on its website, and donation of virtual land called regions. Linden Lab has made it cost effective to allow the all volunteer force consisting of hundreds of people to put on yearly events, including the famous virtual recreation of the annual RFL marathon, happening this year July 16-17. In real world events, hundreds if not thousands of people participate by being sponsored to run marathons in locations across the United States. The Second Life contingent of these volunteers and participants recreate this aspect of the real event by linking dozens of donated regions together to form a running track, and today on July 16 the runners take off for their virtual jog to help raise funds for cancer research, and to show support for cancer survivors and caregivers.

Along that track are campsites for the various teams which have helped in raising funds for the RFL of SL, including the Krypton Radio sponsored team JLU Caped Crusaders and United Federation Starfleet.

JLU Caped Crusaders Campsite - Fortress of Tranquility

The Justice League Unlimited (JLU), is a superhero themed not-for-profit community organization within Second Life, who regularly hosts fundraisers and assists their fellow SL users on a myriad of issues.  The build is by the very talented Searra Weatherwax, and the theme is a merging of the Kryptonian syle with a beautiful park setting and all four seasons. Featuring a set of holo-projectors displaying the names and images of Doctors and researchers who have made significant contributions to the field of cancer research.

United Federation Starfleet Campsite - Alien landscape

The United Federation Starfleet is a professional Star Trek fan organization and is also a  501(c)3 non-profit corporation registered in New York, which operates groups within Second Life and in the real world. The UFS campsite was planned and lovingly crafted by, Zania Turner.

For a complete list of teams participating in the RFL of SL, you may click here.

Press Release from the ACS on RFL of SL

American Cancer Society Relay For Life of Second Life Celebrates Seventh Year with “Seasons of Hope” Theme for 2011

Virtual Online Event Reaches $1 Million Fundraising Milestone in Furthering the Quest for a World with Less Cancer and More Birthdays

ATLANTA – July 11, 2011 – The seventh annual American Cancer Society Relay For Life® of Second Life will take place July 16-17, 2011, as avatars – three-dimensional, graphic visualizations of persons’ alter egos – representing cancer survivors, caregivers, their families and passionate supporters gather virtually to commemorate “Seasons of Hope.” Together, they will celebrate the lives of those who have endured and those who are currently battling cancer, remember loved ones lost, and fight back against the disease by raising funds to help further the American Cancer Society’s vision of a world with less cancer and more birthdays.

Relay For Life of Second Life also emphasizes participation among cancer survivors who are active within the virtual world, where, already this year, more than 150 survivors have pledged their support for the American Cancer Society and its impact on their individual battles with cancer. To learn more about Second Life, including information on how to join a team, visit http://main.acsevents.org/site/TR?pg=entry&fr_id=34810

Second Life is an online, three-dimensional world imagined and created by its residents, who enjoy almost unlimited freedom in virtually engaging in everyday life much as they would in the real world. Linden Lab, which more than a decade ago created Second Life (secondlife.com), enters 2011 as the premier sponsor of Relay For Life of Second Life.
During the early fundraising period for the 2011 Relay For Life of Second Life, the $1 million milestone was passed for the event’s seven-year legacy as the digital parallel to the American Cancer Society’s signature, real-world fundraising initiative, Relay For Life. More than 3,000 participants are expected to attend Relay For Life’s Second Life experience this summer, as 130 teams unite toward a fundraising goal of $275,000.

Relay For Life of Second Life began in 2005, when American Cancer Society volunteers in the Second Life community approached Society staff about creating a Relay For Life event in the virtual world. The result of this collaboration is a cyberspace community gathering in which participants continuously navigate a custom-built track, encompassing a 480-acre virtual park, to raise money to fight for every birthday threatened by every cancer in every community. Marking its global involvement, the 2011 Relay For Life of Second Life event features volunteer representation from 130 of the world’s 196 countries.

Throughout this year, the Relay For Life of Second Life volunteer committee has worked to increase donation security, to invite and train new volunteers, and to design this year’s virtual event track. Volunteers have also donated a renovated design for the American Cancer Society Island, its Second Life property, to allow visitors to intuitively find the information and/or resources they need, including survivor and caregiver support.

Several large-scale team fundraisers have benchmarked the months leading up to this year’s virtual Relay For Life event – starting with Fashion For Life, a kickoff festival featuring the virtual world’s best digital clothing and accessory designers and directing the proceeds of specific items to the American Cancer Society. Other notable events include the Fantasy Faire, a festival in which shoppers purchase digital goods to decorate their avatars, and the Home and Garden Expo, which features virtual houses, gardens and landscapes. These marquee fundraisers complement Relay teams’ and individuals’ general fundraising initiatives.

“We have added new teams to this year’s Relay For Life of Second Life experience, and a number of new businesses with the Second Life community are investing resources in our event. As well, we are hopeful that this summer’s event will surpass our largest single-year fundraising total,” said Scott P. Bennett, American Cancer Society national vice president, marketing. “Recognizing the passion that our Second Life volunteers have for how Relay helps fulfill the American Cancer Society’s lifesaving mission, we are also exploring expansion opportunities for Relay in other virtual worlds.”

In 2007, the American Cancer Society created a virtual headquarters in the Second Life community to provide the same, round-the-clock cancer information and services that the organization delivers in the real world. The Second Life headquarters continues to develop opportunities to serve the needs of survivors, caregivers and families.

In the real world, Relay For Life is a fun-filled, overnight event that convenes millions of people in support of the American Cancer Society’s lifesaving movement. Relay in the real world traces its roots to 1985, when Dr. Gordy Klatt of Tacoma, Washington, a colorectal surgeon, circled a track for 24 hours to raise money for the Society.

During real world Relay events, teams of people gather at schools, fairgrounds and parks and take turns walking and/or running laps with the goal to keep at least one team member on the track at all times. Since 1985, Relay For Life events, held in 5,200 real world communities, have cumulatively raised more than $3 billion to help the Society accelerate the progress against cancer.

The American Cancer Society combines an unyielding passion with nearly a century of experience to save lives and end suffering from cancer. As a global grassroots force of more than three million volunteers, we fight for every birthday threatened by every cancer in every community. We save lives by helping people stay well by preventing cancer or detecting it early; by helping people get well by being there for them during and after a cancer diagnosis; by finding cures through investment in groundbreaking discovery; and by fighting back by rallying lawmakers to pass laws to defeat cancer and by rallying communities worldwide to join the fight. As the nation’s largest non-governmental investor in cancer research, contributing more than $3.5 billion, we turn what we know about cancer into what we do. As a result, more than 11 million people in America who have had cancer and countless more who have avoided it will be celebrating birthdays this year. To learn more about us or to get help, call us anytime, day or night, at 1-800-227-2345 or visit cancer.org.

FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT:
Claire Greenwell
American Cancer Society
Phone: (404) 417-5883
Email: claire.greenwell@cancer.org

Incoming search terms:

• power rangers background
• power rangers mighty morphin
• power ranger vector mighty morphin
• mighty morphin power rangers masks

Krypton Radio Newswire (See also: Woodbury Banned a Third Time, SL-Bronies Take a Hit)

A group notice was intercepted a few days ago which was reported as having been published to the Wrong Hands group in Second Life, purportedly by Tux Winkler.  The notice provided information about a new version of the Oynx client being made available  to the group members for possible griefing purposes.  The text of the notice:

Second Life Onyx Viewer Update!

Working god mode and many other covert features to rule second life!

Get it here Hands!
(link redacted)

Our updated hack secondlife, godmode, free money, full perm everything, secondlife god viewer!

Your pal,
Tux Winkler

Technical experts from Second Life’s Justice League Unlimited (JLU) group are reviewing this posted version of the client for possible threats to the Second Life community, and to validate its authenticity, which remains in some question.

The Wrong Hands and its members remain a concern to Second Life residents given their activities.  Linden Lab technicians are also being notified. Most of the exploits supported by the Onyx Viewer, a reference viewer originally created by Modular Systems ostensibly for testing and verifying exploits, have since been nullified by Linden Lab, so it is not known exactly how many of the features of the new release of Onyx actually function as Tux implies. Readers and listeners are advised to report Wrong Hands activities, especially griefing activities, directly to Linden Lab via abuse report when they are encountered on Second Life.  Readers need not be concerned about accidentally filing false reports – nearly all Wrong Hands members use ban evasion alts, their original accounts having been deleted long ago.  Simply being on the grid is a violation in their case, so filing for alt abuse is usually a solid approach.

Update – July 25, 2011

Tux Winkler, the last member of the notorious Wrong Hands group to retain his original account, was deleted from Second Life by the Linden Lab governance team at approximately 9:30 this morning.  With the loss of their sims Red Square and Revolution, the power of the Wrong Hands over the good people of Second Life is broken.

- 30 -

Incoming search terms:

• power rangers background
• power rangers mighty morphin
• power ranger vector mighty morphin
• mighty morphin power rangers masks

You Too Can Be a Hero – Join Us In Our Fight Against

the Greatest Supervillian of All:  CANCER

Each year, the American Cancer Society sponsors the Relay for Life, a fund-raising phenomenon that occurs simultaneously all over the world,  culminating in Relay events all over the country.  Unsurprisingly, Second Life plays host to its own Relay, and for years has proven that Second Life can and does have a profound positive effect on the real world.

Although every Relay For Life is different, there are certain traditions at all Relays, no matter where they are held. These traditions help participants celebrate, remember, and fight back.

Second Life’s Relay for Life began in 2005 and raised a mere $5,000 USD.  Five years later in 2010, Relay for Life raised an astonishing $222,000 USD, laying to rest forever the conception that what we do in our virtual world does not make a difference.  It’s not just a game.  It matters, and properly harnessed, it can help save lives.

This year the theme for the Second Life Relay for Life event is “Seasons of Change”.  Event chairs in-world are MamaP Beerbaum and co-chair Dwen Dooley.

How You Can Help

Since 2009, the Justice League Unlimited of Second Life has participated in the Relay for Life and raised  thousands of dollars in United States currency, using the in-world currency known as “Lindens”.  This year is no different.  Since the Relay itself happens July 17, in synchronization with the real world Relay events around the country, we’re hoping to have your help.    Visit our Second Life Relay for Life web site and donate directly.  You can use VISA, Mastercard, American Express or Discover Card to make your donation.

But will it hurt?

No, it won’t hurt a bit.  You don’t have to contribute hundreds of dollars, or even dozens of dollars.  If all you can spare is $20, then that gets the American Cancer Society $20 closer to finding a cure.  Heroism comes in all sizes, large and small -  and if all you can spare is $5, then you can still honor the hero within and make that donation.

And by the way – it won’t hurt at all.   We promise.

- 30 -

Update – July 10, 2011

With a week to go before the Relay in Second Life, with your generous donations the Justice League joins dozens of other teams by surpassing a quarter million Lindens collected for the American Cancer Society.  Now it’s time to show what the power of the media can really do.  If you haven’t donated yet, please do so.  You’ll get this warm fuzzy feeling inside that lets you know you’ve done some good in the world.  And isn’t that worth it?

Links

• JLU Caped Crusaders Relay For Life Donation Page
• Official Relay for Life Web Site
• History of Relay for Life in Second Life

P.S.  We’re really not kidding.  Won’t you please make a donation to help us help the American Cancer Society?  Go get your credit card.  It’s in your wallet or purse.  You can do it right online.

Incoming search terms:

• power rangers background
• power rangers mighty morphin
• power ranger vector mighty morphin
• mighty morphin power rangers masks

Krypton Radio Newswire
(See also: Woodbury Banned a Third Time, SL-Bronies Take a Hit)

LulzSec’s Dumpster Knights

A Krypton Radio Editorial

They’re like a bunch of garbagemen, trash-pickers who found a couple of old suits of armor in a dumpster and now think they’re knights.   A disorganized gang of Kabuki dancers, running in and out of endless doorways, changing costumes, changing masks, making everyone think there’s more of them than there is.  Angry, nihilistic college students, professors, and would-be entrepreneurs, guilty over their desire for success in a world where success is supposed to be a sign that you’ve sold out to the Dark Side.

The hackers, so-called “hacktivists” that have been breaking into systems as diverse as Eve Online, Sony, the CIA, the US Senate, and the UK’s Serious Organized Crime Agency, are lauded on one side as virtual freedom fighters, but seen by authorities as criminals and terrorists.

These are the hackers who have been terrorizing the Net – and it may have started at least partially in the online service called Second Life, owned and operated by California based Linden Research, Inc.  A group calling themselves the Patriotic Nigras formed on 7Chan.org in December of 2006 and came to Second Life in an arrogant attempt to “own” it.  At least one of the members of the Patriotic Nigras went on to form a branch of the amorphous internet gang calling itself “LulzSec”.

LulzSec has set their sights higher than dropping boxes in sims and telling furries to “Yiff in Hell”, but their attitudes haven’t changed all that much.  When it was the Patriotic Nigras begging for attention in the sandboxes of Second Life, it was almost amusing, when Eekdacat Ondeneko’s “Doomsday Gun” would send clouds of “Choppa Man” cubes reproducing and screeching like mad all over a region until it crashed.  But recently, the US Government has been reclassifying hacking as a potential act of war, something decidedly unamusing.  This is no longer rape cubes and particle zombies, this is deadly serious.  Too bad the hackers still seem to think it’s funny, some kind of video game, as an Anonymous IRC log seems to imply:

Jun 03 15:05:41 storm    HACK US AND WE WILL BOMB YOU. – Obama
Jun 03 15:05:48 trollpoll    didnt see nice lulz ye
Jun 03 15:05:54 trollpoll    yes, this is not so lulz…
Jun 03 15:06:03 storm    lol
Jun 03 15:06:05 trollpoll    and the NATO doc too…
Jun 03 15:06:12 storm    i didnt see it
Jun 03 15:06:28 trollpoll    NATO document talking about anonymous
Jun 03 15:06:29 *    storm gives channel operator status to Topiary
Jun 03 15:06:35 storm    oh
Jun 03 15:06:36 trollpoll    that must be prosecuted
Jun 03 15:06:43 storm    yeah i saw that
Jun 03 15:06:58 trollpoll    one of these days we will have tanks on our homes…
Jun 03 15:07:19 storm    yeah no shit

The “first strike” of the LulzSec boat appears to have been the recent breach of the Sony Playstation Network first reported on April 27 of this year.   The interlopers broke into half a dozen web servers, stole and posted proprietary source code owned by Sony on BitTorrent sites and even left messages inside the system identifying themselves not only as Anonymous, but a specific splinter group within Anonymous calling themselves LulzSec.

LulzSec claimed that its attack on the Sony Playstation Network was an attempt to convince them to drop its charges against hacker George Hotz, who hacked his PS3 to “jailbreak” it.

George, however,  is giving mixed messages on why Sony took exception to his bypassing the  security on Playstation hardware.  In one interview, he says his basic error in “making Sony mad”.  (http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-20028540-17.html) In another (http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/226603/playstation_hacker_sony_has_only_itself_to_blame_for_breach.html) he issued a statement: “The fault lies with the executives who declared a war on hackers, laughed at the idea of people penetrating the fortress that once was Sony, whined incessantly about piracy, and kept hiring more lawyers when they really needed to hire good security experts. Alienating the hacker community is not a good idea.”  But still other posts have him wanting to get on with life and put the lawsuit behind him, accepting a permanent injunction.  Even when unmasked, these people can’t stop shifting faces.

The “hacktivists”, however, wanted to avenge him anyway, and attacked Sony’s Playstation Network on April 19 to defend his questionable honor, sort of like burning down a bank that had a bankrobber arrested for robbing it.  George himself doesn’t appear to be very grateful for his compatriots’ act of vengeance in his name.  On the Kotaku news site, in an article reporting a rise in PS3 systems being hocked following the shutdown of the Playstation Network, George (or someone using his usual handle) made the following statement in a comment:

GeoHotz
May 15, 2011 at 8:17 AM

Anonymous Hackers Top number 1 site to blame
http://www.somethingawful.com reasoning blameing 4chan site knowing it just to secret get FBI agentz off their legal hacks on interwebs & IRC channels
http://www.woodburyuniversity.edu Mostly all Anon crowns who dose this & run 4chan go’s to this college :]
http://www.Lindenlabs.com probably their at getting back at Sony Homes riping off ScoundLife Like how Tizzers Foxchase soviet russia group goted their butt kick by furries & W-Hat hackers

Link: http://www.kotaku.com.au/2011/05/retailers-ps3-owners-are-ditching-the-platform-migrating-to-360/

Of particular interest are two names out of the entire post:  Woodbury University and Tizzers Foxchase.  Why on Earth would GeoHotz, the creator of the PS3 jailbreak hack, be mentioning Tizzers and Woodbury, much less Second Life, in a comment relating to the LulzSec phenomenon?  Tizzers is known to have provided support for the nascent Patriotic Nigras in the Woodbury group in 2007, and for other raiders in 2010, but why is a small time operator like Tizzers even worth a mention in this saga?

Simply, all these people keep showing up over and over.  The “hacktivist community” would have us believe that there are thousands and thousands of hackers all over the world, a “hacker army” hidden in plain sight.  The truth is, there just aren’t that many of them. They show up over and over, wearing different clothes.  This is why Tizzers and Woodbury are noteworthy.  They’re a model in microcosm of the larger whole – but the whole is so concentrated, even someone as small as Tizzers can be a significant element.

So we go back to Eekdacat Ondaneko, one of the founders of the Patriotic Nigras, whose first name is identical to that of a member of LulzSec.  A recent post on Pastebin.com, reported by several sources, has revealed EEKDACAT’s involvement in the sailing of the LulzSec boat.

The PN and Woodbury in SL use a tactic in common when engaging in griefing.  A single entity could force multiply their effectiveness by building a large backup supply of throwaway accounts, already equipped with griefing tools from a safe repository in-world or from text files of scripts. The mask would change as the action progressed, even as the player behind the mask stayed constant.

In this fashion, few can have the effectiveness of many, and can look like a small army.  If a machine can run more than one avatar at a time, this force multiplication by technology becomes even greater.  But more to the point, as Justice League investigators moved the focus of their attention from griefing group to griefing group, they found that it was the same players involved in each case.

Operating through different masks, the griefers attempt to increase their apparent size and perceived threat, and to create the impression that we as a virtual society are literally drowning in griefers, and that the /b/tards outnumbered the normal citizens by some huge number.  It makes it easy to begin to assert that anti-social or borderline criminal behavior should be accepted because it has become the norm. We’re told the griefing is unimportant, because it’s all just a game, or some kind of digital dream. We are meant to believe that fighting back is hopeless, because the battle is already lost.

Seeing the musical chairs approach for what it is dispels the smoke, and fogs the mirrors. The PN and Woodbury claimed to be legion, but knowing how they leveraged this illusion destroys it.  They were not legion at all.

The LulzSec operation is little different.  We’re seeing many of the same players from other hacking activities, and still others are outing them. We’re seeing some familiar names, some from our own neck of the woods, and is it surprising?  We’re finding that the global hacker army is more of a global hacker platoon, playing musical chairs and trying to convince us they’re bigger and more dangerous.

What makes them more dangerous is that they’re as much after each other as they are the businesses and institutions they’re trying to destroy, and they don’t care much about hurting people who get between them and their targets.  This includes the less clueful people they call “cannon fodder”.

One of the better known methods of attack wielded by Anonymous is a distributed denial of service attack that can be directed at any target by anyone downloading their LOIC software.  LOIC stands for “Low Orbit Ion Cannon”, and runs on user’s machines.  When invoked, everyone who has it installed contributes some of their bandwidth to an attack on a web server, and anyone can select a target.  There’s only one problem: the LOIC does not hide your IP address when you use it, and every person with it installed reports their IP address with every packet it sends out.  LOIC users are cannon fodder.  If you’re caught, it’s just chalked up to “collateral damage”.

This is nothing more than a turf war, waged on the Internet and on other people’s property – and it’s suddenly clear that this turf war is being played on a vastly smaller scale in terms of numbers than anybody had previously supposed, but with higher stakes than anyone had imagined.

LulzSec hacked both the C.I.A and the United States Senate, and gloated about it.  Since the participants come from countries around the world, it’s no longer just a matter for the United States’ Federal Bureau of Investigation – now they’ve inspired changes to military rules of engagement, and an international effort is underway to find and capture the members of LulzSec.  Naturally, the members are now all saying they aren’t members, or were never members, and backing away from LulzSec as fast as they can.  But should we believe them just because they say this?

Can they cause trouble?  Yes.  Should they be taken seriously?  Yes. Are they a world-class threat, a “nation” inside the Net, that should be warred against?

No.  They’re a small, relatively insular group of the same faces over and over.  They’ve already succumbed to attack from other hackers who appear to have unmasked them.  This is the true face of Anonymous – they’ll give each other away, or give up (possibly involuntarily).  You can only make a handkerchief look like a bedsheet by cutting it up and rearranging the pieces for so long.  Eventually, someone will notice the gaps.

- 30 -

Update – July 4, 2011

And now the music stops and the haxx04z take their seats…and a new group emerges…The Script Kiddies! New masks for the same bodies in a new arrangement!  A new group calling itself – and we kid you not – TH3 5CR1PT K1DD3S – managed to hack into Fox New’s Twitter feed and announce that President Obama had died.  They’re not LulzSec.  They’re not the AntiSec group either (which was just LulzSec in a new fright wig) – they’re affiliated with AntiSec.  Their statement to Fox News:

“We are a new group called The Script Kiddies. As i have stated in past interviews we do have connections to anonymous, however this does not represent them in anyway. personally I have been part of many hacks leading back to HBgary and #operationPyaback with anonymous. we will not go into details about how we have acquired Fox news twitter account. We do have several email accounts belonging to fox news. As far as our security i obviously can’t go into details, but i have faith that the members of the script kiddies will remain hidden. We have no announced plans for future attacks, we have brainstormed several ideas. we will be contributing to #antisec in the future but we have found nothing of value within fox to add to the leaks.The updates about Obama are the result of boards script kiddies members after we found no information to leak to anonymous“.

 

They got some email addresses, and hacked a Twitter account. Bow down before the might of  – who were they again?

Links

• infosecisland.com – FBI has IP Address of Anonymous Hackers
• thehackernews.com – LulzSec, Jester Expose Each Other
• wired.com – LulzSec Hacks Sony Again
• pcworld.com – UK Police Nab Teen Hacker, Suspected LulzSec Member
• Fox News – Twitter Account Hacked by LulzSec Copycats

Incoming search terms:

• power rangers background
• power rangers mighty morphin
• power ranger vector mighty morphin
• mighty morphin power rangers masks

Rod Roddenberry

Star Trek’s “Rod” Roddenberry

When: Saturday, July 9, 2011, beginning at 3 p.m. and ending at 5 p.m. SLT.

Where: The “SLSFC4″ Islands within Second Life (Map -> Search)

Cost:
$250 L purchased via the Second Life Marketplace.  Limited tickets are available and sold first come, first served.  If tickets sell out, additional purchases will be denied.  Those who acquire tickets will be added to a private land’s access list to be able to enter the event.

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/SLSFC4-Event-Ticket-Rod-Roddenberry/2426001

Who:
The son of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry, “Rod”, will be making a public appearance on Second Life.  The event will be in a question and answer town hall format.  Audience participants may ask questions about Rod’s parents, the status of the Roddenberry company today, any current and future production plans and what Rod does in his spare time.

“Rod” manages the Roddenberry Diving Team and is currently working on a biography on the life of his parents and the franchise they created called Trek Nation.  He is also recently married and holds a seat within Roddenberry Productions.  ”Rod” can easily be considered the public face of Star Trek.

To attend the question and answer session, it will cost $250 L (approx. $0.95 USD) beginning June 30 when the box office opens on the island of Overtambo in Second Life. Tickets will be limited to between 60 and 80 individuals. Additional screening options may become available at a later date.

Nicki Clyne

Battlestar Galactica’s Nicki Clyne

When: Friday, July 8, 2011, beginning at 6 p.m. and ending at 8 p.m. SLT.

Where: The “SLSFC4″ Islands within Second Life (Map -> Search)

Cost:
$250 L purchased via the Second Life Marketplace.  Limited tickets are available and sold first come, first served.  If tickets sell out, additional purchases will be denied.  Those who acquire tickets will be added to a private land’s access list to be able to enter the event.

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/SLSFC4-Event-Ticket-Nicki-Clyne/2373061

Who:
Nicki Clyne, from the most recent Battlestar Galactica series, will be appearing at the Second Life Science Fiction Convention on Friday, July 8 at 6 p.m. PT for a two-hour question and answer session. Clyne played Crewman Specialist Cally Tyrol in the Battlestar Galactica mini-series, 36 television episodes and four web episodes. Clyne has also had roles in the movies John Tucker Must Die and Saved! as well as on television’s Dead Like Me and Smallville.

To attend the question and answer session, it will cost $250 L (approx. $0.95 USD) beginning June 27 when the box office opens on the island of Overtambo in Second Life. Tickets will be limited to between 60 and 80 individuals. Additional screening options may become available at a later date.

Sources:

• Internet Movie Database (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0167435/)

Rick Sternbach

Star Trek’s Rick Sternbach

When: Sunday, July 10, 2011, beginning at 2 p.m. and ending at 3 p.m. SLT.

Where: The “SLSFC4″ Islands (Map -> Search)

Cost:
$100 L purchased via the Second Life Marketplace.  Limited tickets are available and sold first come, first served.  If tickets sell out, additional purchases will be denied.  Those who acquire tickets will be added to a private land’s access list to be able to enter the event.

Who:
Rick Sternbach is a senior illustrator, designer and technical consultant from the Star Trek franchise, including The Next Generation, Deep Space 9, Voyager and the movie, Nemesis.  Sternbach has also served as an artist for Carl Sagan’s Cosmos as well as the feature film Solaris.  Sternbach currently runs his own production studio and shares his expertise with production designers and art directors.

Sternbach’s best know work with the Star Trek series include Deep Space 9 with Herman Zimmerman, U.S.S. Voyager, shuttle crafts, starships, satellites and space stations.  Let us not forget Captain Picard’s mural in his ready room on the U.S.S. Enterprise D.  Sternbach has also co-written the Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Technical Manual and many Starfleet Technical Database articles in Star Trek: The Magazine.

Sponsors:

• The Federation -IFT-
• Beach Bunns
• BSG Exodus
• BSG99 Athena
• Deep Star Callisto & USS Nimoy
• Space Repo
• The Doctor Who Exposition
• The New Order of the Jedi
• The Tocana Colonies
• United Federation Starfleet

Incoming search terms:

• power rangers background
• power rangers mighty morphin
• power ranger vector mighty morphin
• mighty morphin power rangers masks

NEW JENNY EVERYWHERE COMIC BOOK AVAILABLE
Quark Time Webcomic Volume 1 Released in Print

Philadelphia, June 23, 2011:  Just short of its one-year anniversary, the webcomic Jenny Everywhere’s Infinite: Quark Time announces the release of Volume 1, Weak Interaction, in print form.  Comprising the first 28 weeks of the webcomic’s run, the paper edition is available to the general public online via the print-on-demand outlet Indyplanet.com.  Comic shops can place orders via online distributor ComicsMonkey.com.

Jenny Everywhere is an open-source superhero that anyone may use in their own works.  August 13th of this year commemorates the tenth birthday of the heroine, who has appeared in hundreds of creations from short stories to comics to short films. “Jenny is a unique character,” says Gwen Patton, creator of Quark Time, “The basic character belongs to everyone, anyone can branch her off in whatever direction they want, but what they create belongs to them.”

While the comic is available for free online, some people prefer to read it in a large chunk in a comic book form.  “For some people, it’s a nostalgia thing,” says Patton, “For some, it’s a matter of convenience.  But some people just like the feel of a paper comic book in their hands.”  The Quark Time webcomic updates Sundays at http://quarktime.net.

Gwendolyn Patton
Revolution Earth Press
Online: Quark Time
In print: Indy Planet Store

Incoming search terms:

• power rangers background
• power rangers mighty morphin
• power ranger vector mighty morphin
• mighty morphin power rangers masks

My Letter to Linden Lab

by Frankie Antonioni

First, a little history of this aricle. A few months back, I sent this letter to Oz Linden, on a note card, in Second Life. Of course I never
got a message from him, saying what he thought about the letter,or if he had gotten the letter. So here is my letter. It’s not just to Oz
Linden, but to all Lindens.

Dear Lindens,

I won’t be using viewer 2. I use viewer 1.23, because of the freedom. I can look at 2, or more profiles at the same time, and I can move them around. About mesh. My computer can’t handle mesh. I have had my computer since 2006. I can’t afford a new computer, or graphics card, right now. So if LL gets rid of viewer 1.23, I will have to stop playing Second Life. I rent 2 parcells in SL. What do you think will happen if I don’t pay my rent, and the person that owns the land, will try to sell the land? Or if the land dosen’t sell, the  owner abandons the land?

I’m not the only one. There are many people leaving Second Life right now, and it is because of viewer 2.  But LL refuses to listen, and learn from their mistakes. What is LL going to do, when more people leave, and LL loses more money?

LL needs to admit that they have screwed up big time. Next, they need to correct those mistakes.  Ask the people that play SL, what kind of viewer they want. Give the people a choice. I’m going to tell you something. And this goes to all employees of LL. If the people that play Seond Life, don’t like viewer 2, then they are not going to play. The new viewer is going to make Second Life worse, not better. It’s not just programmers, or coders that play SL. It’s people from all walks of life.

Now, I have just recently found this out. People that are blind, can’t use Viewer 2. So, if a person is blind, they are SOL. So Viewer 2 not only sucks, and is sorry, but it does not comply with The Americans with Disabilities Act.  Does LL, want to exclude blind people from playing Second Life?

I would like for you to look at these links.

• http://secondden.blogspot.com/2010/10/everybody-knows-viewer-2-sucks.html
• http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Viewer-2-0-General/VIEWER-2-SUCKS-SUCKS-SUCKS/td-p/209952
• http://secondlifesecondchance.blogspot.com/2011/01/second-life-in-decline-identifying.html
• http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2011/05/lindens-stealth-deprecate-viewer-123.html
• http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2011/05/off-to-see-the-wizard.html

These mention the same observations that I have presented to you. Read the links, and then look at the comments. It’s not just a few people, that feel this way. It’s lots!

So, what should Linden Lab do?

First Linden Lab, should not only admit it’s mistakes, but should correct those mistakes. Linden Lab should then give the members of Second Life a say in some of the decisions about Second Life. Like what kind of viewer, or how search should be done. I’m not talking about having elections in Second Life, or making financial, or business decisions. No, just the decisions that affect the viewer, or search.

So let’s have it put up on the Second Life website, or on the JIRA, and let the people vote on it. By sticking to Viewer 2, Linden Lab is only hurting them selves. Will Linden Lab ever learn, from it’s mistakes? Have they ever learned?

 

Incoming search terms:

• power rangers background
• power rangers mighty morphin
• power ranger vector mighty morphin
• mighty morphin power rangers masks

We’ve all seen them… rezzing replicators, spamming regions with obscenities, flooding your screen with whimsical to pornographic images and sounds. Crashing sims and viewers for fun, and with countless other attacks they claim it’s ‘just a game‘ and “we do it for the lulz” – even using illegal computer programs to steal from legitimate real life (RL) businesses, and harass residents in-world.  Some going so far as to track down a resident’s real life information and make harassing or threatening phone calls, and in very rare cases a few have traveled miles to mock their victims at their doorstep with veiled or direct threats. Who are these people and what motivates them? While the term is used in nearly all multiplayer online games,  in Linden Lab’s Second Life and other MMO’s we call them Griefers.

I’m not going to pretend this is simple. This is a complex subject, and  the motivations of griefers and griefer groups do vary from person to person. However,  there are some common threads which are found in the behavior of griefers all over, and it is those I will examine here. Later, I will delve into the serial griefer.. a much darker subject. To begin, let us look at a few unfortunate un-truths:

No one Begins as a Griefer

Oh how I wish that were true, I could stand around in Help Island showing off the wonderful things that can be seen and done in Second Life. Offering suggestions on how to deal with conflicts in a safe and sane way when they do arise and there would never be another Woodbury, PN, Troll Manual, or Plastic Duck again. The Patriotics Nigras were born on the 4Chan boards, after ruining Habbo Hotel for thousands of users. The question was posed as to whether Second Life was similarly ‘raidable’, and in December of 2006 they staged a raid on three of Second Life’s sandboxes with a raiding party of some 26 members.   It was the largest operation Second Life had seen up to that time.  By March of 2007, the 4Chan group in Second Life was disbanded with the aid of the very person who had founded it once she realized what the group had become.  The Patriotic Nigras would go on to torture Second Life until their demise in June of 2010.

Woodbury began in a university communications class room with Dr. Edward Clift pulling the strings of  then-student Jordan Bellino, the person who would later become known as Tizzers Foxchase. Both groups are now persona non grata, PN having been removed from SL back in 2005, and Dr. Clift and his students had even received notice from Linden Lab Legal Dept. that they were not to have any further presence in Second Life in April of 2010.

The evidence here suggests that with groups at least, yes people have and do create initial accounts for the sole  purpose of griefing. This is not always the case,  and there are those for whom a little guidance would go a long way. Unfortunately for them Lindens guided tutorials focus more on the functionality of Second Life than the social interaction side of things. It is here that citizen groups like the Justice League Unlimited /League of Heroes,  **Police Department** and others can make a huge difference.

In other situations a person may ‘become’ a griefer by choice, though usually this stemming from a personal conflict with another resident. Some use failed relationships with groups over clashing ideologies or xenophobiaas an excuse; in the case of relationships it may start as simple hateful or angry IMs and escalate to other nastier forms. Those sort of griefs tend to be targeted and otherwise leave others ‘out of it’. In cases of xenophobia (note I do not use homophobia as that is really just a subclass of the same), the targeted group is perceived as ‘strange’ or aberrant and rather than let them be and simply avoid contact, the offender chooses to harass and torment the group in question with similar escalation.

Griefers are simply misunderstood,  and are creative people who ‘push the boundaries’

No, an avante guard artist ‘pushes the boundaries’. A griefer outright breaks the rules. These rules are clearly stated in the Terms of Service and Community Standards documents available to all users and agreed to on initial log in – in fact log in is impossible without checking off the “I Agree” box presented by the client, a statement that the user has indeed read and agreed to the rules. While art may be thought provoking and may anger some viewers, the difference is the intent. The intent of rezzing Nazi emblem baring megaprims in a public sandbox, for example,  is not artistic, but is intended to disrupt its normal use and trigger as much drama and  discord possible.

Peacekeeping Groups Create Griefers

This is a cyclical argument and fails logically, the idea is that griefers attack sims in order to get a response from peacekeeping groups. Considering the actions of legitimate peacekeeping groups are limited to filing abuse reports with as little actual interaction with the offenders as possible, this falls on its face. All this does is get Linden Lab’s attention on the offenders and their accounts banned, and there is no generative  force at work here.

Now to be fair,  I should mention that peacekeeper groups should not be mistaken for what I like to call ‘sand box militias’.  These are other groups which make the mistake of using the griefers’ own tactics against them, usually and ultimatey violating Terms of Service in the process themselves.  They are really no more than griefers themselves at that point, perhaps with delusions of nobility, but the ends do not justify the means here.  Three years ago these sandbox militia were very common, but the League has set a new standard for peacekeeping, and militias are all but unknown now.  There are still some so-called “police” groups, but apart from the **Police Department** these are as much roleplayers as genuine patrolmen.

This notwithstanding, peacekeepers do not create griefers.  This is like saying, “If there were no law enforcement in the world, there would be no criminals.”  This line of reasoning does not even stand up under the most casual inspection.

*****

Myths out of the way, we are left with the question of motivation. Why would someone do this sort of thing. It rolls down hill to effectively one concept : POWER.

Ask a griefer why they for example , filled a sandbox with dancing Marios and sound spam and the answer, after the usual rants and abusive remarks, is almost universal: “for the LULZ“.  Well, what does that mean? Clearly in Textspeach LOL means ‘laughs out loud’, and the word “lulz” is a 4Chan corruption of this, but what is so funny? A sim full of Marios and sound spam is far more annoying than funny. The sim is effectively useless to anyone during such an attack, even to the griefers. The laughs, sadly, come from the reactions from other sandbox users, the sight of other residents fleeing the sim, or shouting / swearing at the griefers over what the griefers view as ‘just a game‘.

Just a Game…

Games have a number of elements to be considered games,  this comes in something called Games Theory which I will summarize here as best I can,  comparing these to Second Life.

1. Games have players: Check, Second life has players/residents.
2. Games have rules: Check, Second Life has rules (the Terms of Service and Community Standards).
3. Games have Goals, with clearly defined winners and losers (less clearly defined in non zero sum games) : ok… here we have a problem. Second Life has no set goals.

Second Life is not then by strict definition a Game, it is best described as a platform on which many activities including games can be held. So, what is the game griefers speak of? It is their game, they have set their own goal, one of control. When a griefer or griefing group has effectively rendered a sim useless , they claim to have Control over it. This is nearly universal, a griefers “lulz” usually run along the lines of “I did THIS! – I have POWER!” If this sounds familiar, it should as this is tied very closely to bully mentality and has similar roots.

As with dealing any bully, this power can be removed by largely ignoring them. Shutting off particles or sound, sitting on the ground and continuing whatever you were doing as if nothing were happening (while of course filing an abuse report).

But while this is true in most cases, some griefers are so focused on what they’re doing that they don’t really care whether you react or not.  They’re going to keep going, until in some cases they crash the sim you’re on, escalating the stakes until ignoring them is simply impossible.  There is a type of griefer who is so desperate for attention that they absolutely will not stop until they have caused you so much financial, emotional or physical damage that ignoring them becomes dangerous in and of itself.  Griefers like this have a pathological drive, and cannot be educated, “calmed down” or reasoned with.

The need here is for personal empowerment and peer approval, this is why a number of griefers will post their deeds on YouTube as if to say “Look what I can do!” . The average real life age of griefers is between 13 and 17, a period when most of us  not in the ‘popular crowd’ were feeling unappreciated or put down by our peers. There are obviously more constructive means of acquiring peer approval and personal empowerment , but these seek the fastest and most destructive path. Typically this ends when they are faced with consequences in Second Life, this means a ban.

Chillingly this leads to the worst of the worst… the Serial Griefer.

In the exact words of once such griefer, Robble Rubble, posted on this very website:

“Being banned is a liberating thing sometimes, when before you would approach a
situation with the idea “oh I could be banned for this, I better not do it.” But
after you have been banned you stop really caring as much about being banned leading
to more freedom and risk taking. Nothing is really making me hesitate when I do
horrible things anymore. It’s not a hard process to reset my router and run a program
to change my hardware ID, it takes only a couple of minutes and I am back.”

These are the words of a criminal mindset. Rubble here (and other serial griefers like him) has given up on caring about consequences. In the same way a hardened criminal might say “So what, I get arrested I do my time and get fed and housed for free, then I’m back with a new fake ID”. This really should frighten, as it does as this sort of sociopath leads in but one direction, and it isn’t pretty. Unless this mentality changes this direction manifests in two possible outcomes in the end if taken all the way to its logical conclusion: prison, or death. In the end this sort of person is mourned, not for their loss, but for the wasted potential – unless somehow they manage to awaken before they actually take that final plunge off the cliff and turn their lives around.  Not all do, and I’m quite serious about the death part.  Some of these guys end up dying as an indirect result of some of the poor life choices to which they are led by their self-destructive, nihilistic personal philosophies.

That may seem a harsh assessment, but compare this situation to real life laws. In animal abuse cases, for example, the question is often raised “If this person is willing to do this to a defenseless animal, what exists in their mind to prevent them harming other persons?” I offer the following echo of that, “If this person cares so little for consequence in a virtual setting, what barrier exists to prevent them doing harm in the real world?”

The answer is very often, and very chillingly the same: “None”.

- 30 -

Incoming search terms:

• power rangers background
• power rangers mighty morphin
• power ranger vector mighty morphin
• mighty morphin power rangers masks

SLSFC4 Convention Poster

BSG’s Nicky Clyne & the Virtual Convention

Nicky Clyne, from the most recent Battlestar Galactica series, will be appearing at the Second Life Science Fiction Convention on Friday, July 8 at 6 p.m. PT for a two-hour question and answer session.  Clyne played Crewman Specialist Cally Tyrol in the Battlestar Galactica mini-series, 36 television episodes and four web episodes.  Clyne has also had roles in the movies John Tucker Must Die and Saved! as well as on television’s Dead Like Me and Smallville.

To attend the question and answer session, it will cost $1,000 L ($3.70 USD) beginning June 27 when the box office opens on the island of Overtambo.  Tickets will be limited to between 60 and 80 individuals.  Additional screening options may become available at a later date.

• For details, please visit Space Station 51 at http://ss51.trekfederation.com/.
• SLSFC4 Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=113642432049809
• Sources: – Internet Movie Database (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0167435/)

Incoming search terms:

• power rangers background
• power rangers mighty morphin
• power ranger vector mighty morphin
• mighty morphin power rangers masks

Infamous “W-Hat” Group In Disarray, Closing Down

Krypton Radio Staff

W-Hat Logo

Masakazu Kojima (Masa), known within the virtual world of Second Life as leader of the controversial and at times infamous W-Hat group, has announced via the W-Hat website that his account had been permanently banned from the SL service by Linden Lab.  The online service cites “severe or repeated violations of the Terms of Service” but in their email to Masakazu did not detail what those violations were.

W-Hat was originally created in Second Life in 2004 for members of the forums at the popular Something Awful web site.  W-Hat members referred to themselves as “goons”, or “SA goons”.  They were well known for their general interest in that which others find offensive, and the group attracted wide range of people, from the merely curious to some of the worst griefers Second Life has ever known. Members of W-Hat have created hacked clients, committed content theft, and even created sim crashing weapons.  The sim crashers used by the Patriotic Nigras were based on the original ones created by W-Hat.

However, the FAQ page on the W-Hat web site states that none of these things are condoned or are the official policy of W-Hat, and that people who engaged in this activity were removed from the group whenever they were discovered.

The infamous Voted 5 group was comprised primarily of former W-Hat members who were invited to leave because their activities cast W-Hat in a bad light and put the group at risk.  Plastic Duck, the creator of both the first truly effective sim crasher weapon and creator of the first megaprims (distributed via his alternate account, Gene Replacement) was one of these.  Plastic Duck was also responsible for the discovery and correction of a critical bug in the Linden Lab monetary system which could have destroyed the entire economy.  Plastic Duck could have simply exploited the flaw, but instead worked with Linden Lab to identify and correct it before it became a problem.  Plastic Duck lost his account permanently immediately following an interview on a griefer-friendly blog site in February of this year.

Masa’s primary interest seems to have been technical, and while the official W-Hat policy was against griefer and racist activity within the group, this same activity went largely unmoderated, thus leading to W-Hat’s overall unsavory reputation.

In an email interview with Krypton Radio, Masa shared what information she had on the possible circumstances surrounding her banishment and the future of W-Hat:

KR: Lets start off with the big question people are asking, what exactly happened? Do you know why you were banned?

Masa: I don’t know. I hadn’t logged in since February, as confirmed by phone support. It was on my billing day so I thought there may have been a credit card issue, but they said there was not. They had me create a “case” on the support website. Here was the response to my attempt to appeal the termination or find out what I did:

====
Hello,
We regret to inform you that Linden Lab has terminated your access to
the Second Life virtual world. Because you have severely or repeatedly
violated the Second Life Terms of Service or Community Standards, your
account and any alternate Second Life accounts are now permanently
inaccessible.

What happens to your Second Life account holdings?
When terminating Second Life accounts, we remove all associated
holdings. There will be no refunds or exchanges for any unused time on
your subscription, Island purchases, Linden Dollars, or inworld
objects, items, or content.

Sincerely,
Customer Support
Linden Lab
====

Masa: The only guess I have is that someone created offensive content on one of the remaining plots of group land, and I was banned for it.

KR: Will you be attempting to return to Second Life?

Masa: No.

KR:Several members of the permabanned Woodbury University /Wrong Hands griefer group and other individuals known to be allied with griefing groups in SL have gained officer status in the W-Hat group, and are inviting people at random in what appears to be some of personal vendetta, someone with whom they have some enmity. We know that Plastic Duck left W-Hat long ago. Do you know how they gained access and why they might be doing this, and is there anything at this point that you or anyone can do about it?

Masa: After I sold our sim, someone offered to let us use one of theirs, and I let them be an officer of the group. They invited some people, who invited some people, and so on. I was the only owner of the group and the only one with permissions to change roles. New officers can be invited, and nobody can demote or eject them.

KR: The other major question is, what happens now? Is the W-Hat group to be shut down, and how will this change W-Hat’s nature as a group or an organization?

Masa: W-Hat was already largely inactive. The group will probably be disbanded. The website and projects will remain as-is for the foreseeable future.

KR: W-Hat appears to have had its genesis outside of Second Life – what’s your next move? What do you envision W-Hat becoming in the future?

Masa: There are SA goon groups in every game there is. I do not run or intend to start any others. Feel free to ask anything about the group. This is all I have left of the 7 years of my life that LL deleted. I opened another case which has not been answered yet, here is the content (terse because it’s limited to 1000 characters):

====
I am trying to appeal the termination of my account on 2011-05-17.

I have not severely nor repeatedly violated the TOS or CS. My account
was in good standing for over 7 years before being suddenly
terminated.

I was suspended once, on 2010-02-01, because someone created offensive
content in my sim. It was lifted but I was warned about future
incidents. (4051-7322562)

After that I sold my sim, gave away most of my mainland holdings,
disabled object creation on and gave others in my group permissions to
sell the remaining group land.

My last login was in Feb 2011 according to phone support. I do not
have any alternate accounts. I do not have the Second Life client
software installed.

I use my account to provide infrastructure and support via IM for the
services I provide to LSL developers (since 2006) at
http://w-hat.com/. This is all I want to continue to be able to do.

If nothing else, please disband my group “W-Hat”, as it has fallen into chaos.
====

KR: Touching on the technical side of W-Hat for a moment, despite the dubious reputation you and your people have been laden with over the years, what many may not know is that your group has actually contributed in a significant and positive way to Second Life.

The Name2Key database created and maintained by W-Hat ended up being one of the most important technical contributions to SL in its history. Can you talk about how that came to be and the history of the project, and where it might be going now that you’ve lost your main account? And, the mystery on many people’s minds, how did you manage to be so effective at gathering new keys of freshly minted avatars?

Masa: The database relies on keys being submitted with the scanner script on the page. They are verified by in-world objects that belong to me, which are currently still present and working normally even though my account has been terminated. If they are removed I will have to find someone else to rewrite and redeploy them, and/or do verification from the search website instead.

Fun fact: the name2key database servers 20-40 requests per second, 24/7.

12:00AM up 2438 days, 22:08, 1 user, load averages: 1.50, 1.45, 1.41

W-Hat’s Name2Key database is still active, and is not especially dependent on Masakazu Kojima’s presence in Second Life for its continued operation. It is used by thousands of commercial enterprises and scripters all over Second Life, and represents a substantial contribution to the Second Life economy.  This was offset by W-Hat being perceived as either unable or unwilling to do something about their high griefer contingent within the group, to the point where griefing in Second Life and W-Hat had become nearly synonymous terms.  From the FAQ page on the W-Hat web site one could draw the conclusion that the situation was beyond their control.  It is not possible to state with certainty what the truth is one way or the other.

Krypton Radio would like to thank Masakazu Kojima for taking time to respond to our questions.

Links

• W-Hat
• Something Awful
  

- 30 -

This is a developing story. Stay tuned to Krypton Radio for further updates!

Incoming search terms:

• power rangers background
• power rangers mighty morphin
• power ranger vector mighty morphin
• mighty morphin power rangers masks

article by Cdurd770 Halfpint, Chief of **Police Department** on the Second Life MMO

**Police Department**'s new headquarters welcomes new arrivals at Metaverse Justice Center

Not often do you get the opportunity to have something unique built to represent your group and everything you believe in.  Recently our group, “**Police Department**“  jumped at the chance to build a spectacular new facility to house our operations. Our new location on Sweet Icon (soon to be renamed as Metaverse Justice Center) features an informative welcome and orientation area for new residents, as well as a fantastic freebie market to help those who visit get their first personal belongings  to help them begin this journey we call Second Life. It’s most certainly our great honor and privilege to have the means to offer this to the public.

Some of you may find yourselves asking, “Who or what is **Police Department**?”

**Police Department** is a resident-run, all-volunteer public service organization whose belief and purpose is to educate, enhance the safety and enjoyment of the community, and defend human dignity.  We try to live by the values of honesty, integrity, trust, respect, loyalty and a dedication to the public welfare, and these ideals are  the principles that guide everything we do.

PD acts as peace keepers, mentors, advisors to sim owners and estate managers, security personnel and we patrol in public sims and in private ones where we have been invited to do so. We staff our headquarters to make ourselves available to residents who need advice on anything from issues with a prim they lost on their sim to dealing with stalkers in real life.  We work hard to earn and keep our good reputation and have developed a strong bond with the virtual community we serve.

PD has come a very long way. In our early days we were little more than fledgling group with a set of ideals in mind, patrolling through random sims and sandboxes offering help wherever it was needed. Our efforts never went unnoticed. In the months and years that followed we worked to develop relationships and the trust of owners and estate managers, and began to gain estate rights  in the regions we patrolled.  We understood that this kind of trust was a rare commodity, and we were doing well.  After some time trying this out and having great success with about a dozen regions, we knew we’d struck the right balance of trust and service – but given the limits of groups as they function in Second Life, we had to figure out how we could expand our services unencumbered by Second Life’s technical limitations.

This fountain on Metaverse Justice Center is dedicated to significant peacekeeping groups across the grid.

Early in our first year, I had the opportunity to meet Kalel Venkman of the Justice League Unlimited (JLU)/ League of Heroes. We spent quite a bit of time discussing how groups like the League operates. I learned a lot from Kal, and taking advice from him and others, I set the PD to the task of designing a core system for PD that would handle everything, from banning and ejecting on unlimited sims with permissions, to record keeping, radio communications and so much more. We called this system “BANID” -  Banning and Networked Information Database. Rolling this system out and releasing our security nodes on the Second Life marketplace allowed us to greatly expand the number of estates to which we could provide our services, from ten to more than 1500 over the course of just a few months.  This greatly expanded our ability to serve the public welfare, and to help estate managers keep the peace on their lands.

We branched out after that into charity and benefit work as well, and we work with the American Cancer Society (Relay for Life) and various groups in SL that support the handicapped or needy.

What would we like to see in the future? Well, for starters, I’d like to see our group continue to offer services and advice for as long as possible. It’s been a pleasure to be here for nearly three years as the Chief. Hopefully I’ll see many more. More than that I’d like to see more peace keeper group emerge and be successful, remain untarnished by greed and power and really do some good here. I’d also like to see the existing groups such as ours and the League to continue in their tradition of service and leadership in the community.

If I could give one piece of advice to up and coming groups, it would be this: keep your head up, stay honest, and practice what you preach. With this said I’ll leave you with my favorite quote…

On April 20th, 2010, Cdurd770 Halfpint and his PD hosted a conference in SL for ILEA, the International Law Enforcement Administration headquartered in Plano, Texas.  In attendance were approximately 100 real life police chiefs and brass, for a virtual lecture about Second Life and some of the practical and cost benefits of using Second Life for training purposes.  A second seminar is being scheduled for ILEA this summer.  **Police Department** also provides a similar presentation on crime and law in virtual worlds a few times a year for William and Mary’s College of Williamsburg, Virginia, again in the Second Life virtual environment.

**Police Department** maintains a public information web site on its activities in Second Life, and came under the command of Cdurd770 Halfpint in April of 2008. When looking for **Police Department** in Second Life, look for the double asterisks at the front and back of the group name.  That’s how you’ll know you have the right one.

- 30 -

Incoming search terms:

• power rangers background
• power rangers mighty morphin
• power ranger vector mighty morphin
• mighty morphin power rangers masks

by KR Assistant Editor: Emiley Tomsen

After seven years of fundraising the American Cancer Society‘s Relay For Life in Second Life, is celebrating a milestone in its history at the accomplishment of reaching the 1-Million dollar mark. Announced on its website and via notices to group members, ACS Staff Partner Stingray9798 Raymaker shared the news that at the current rate of fundraising this could be one of the biggest Relay events in Second Life history. The money raised in SL is accumulated by the donation of “Linden dollars”, an in-game currency used by customers of the service. The currency is then exchanged for real money, which in this case has equaled over 1 million U.S. dollars.

Stingray9798 Raymaker and 2011 RFL Event Chair – MamaP Beerbaum, agreed to sit down with me and conduct an interview, sharing their RFL experiences with Krypton Radio.

KR: For our newer readers who may not be fully aware of what this is all about, the Relay For Life is one of the American Cancer Society’s most celebrated events, which has helped raised millions of dollars to fund the research which one day may help stamp out cancer. Taking it a step further the RFL has turned to helping raise money within the virtual world of Second Life, which is operated by Linden Lab, based out of San Francisco-California in the United States.

Joining me today is the Online Content Manager for the American Cancer Society’s Relay For Life – National Relay For Life Business Unit. Known by his avatar and other SL’ers as Stingray9798 Raymaker, along with fellow SL based RFL staff member MamaP Beerbaum, who was gracious enough to spend some time telling Krypton Radio about their excitement over the accomplishment of raising 1Million U.S. dollars through the world of Second Life.

Thank you to both of you for taking time out of your busy schedules to speak with KR, I’ll start off with Mr Raymaker on this. Can you give our readers a brief history on how the RFL came to be set up in SL, and how Linden Lab has helped you out on these efforts?

Stingray: Actually, the American Cancer Society got involved in Second Life in 2004 when a group of volunteers approached our national office about raising money in-world.  The American Cancer Society evaluated the level of effort with the expected results, and determined that it would be worth piloting an event.  The Second Life experience would be overseen by the Futuring and Innovation Department (RC Mars), and the event would be a gala.  The following year, interest grew, and the first Relay For Life of Second Life was held, raising $5,000 USD for the American Cancer Society.  Over the years, American Cancer Society staff and volunteers have worked closely with Linden Lab to ensure that the RFL of SL has all it needs to execute the Relay season, and its continued growth.  ACS staff and volunteers have presented at SLCC and other SL-related conferences, and LL continues to work closely with us to ensure that our efforts are supported across the grid.

KR: It’s remarkable so many people who are spread across the world have been able to find a common ground in their passion to defeat cancer, and have been able to use a medium such as Second Life to raise funds to fight this menace to our health as a people. I’d like to get a reaction from both of you on this, I would imagine emotions are running a bit high for everyone, the joy over raising such a grand amount of money. Can you share with our readers how you all are feeling and maybe share a story on how you personally came to be involved with the RFL in SL?

Stingray: Our collective response would be:

We work endlessly to create opportunities for members of all SL communities to make a difference in the fight against cancer.  We recognize that behind every avatar is a real human being, and that person has been touched by cancer in some way.  Regardless of how someone chooses to live their Second Life, they should have a platform through which they can fight this disease and use the virtual world to make tangible differences in the real-world.

MamaP:We come from over 25 countries around the world.  We are horse lovers, bunny lovers, Star Trek followers, we are goreans, we are furries, we are tinies, we are fairies, we are super heroes, we are snails, we are families, college students, men and woman, we come from different communities, nationalities, and races, the list goes on and on and on, but the most important thing to remember is that our strength will come from us working together!

I relay for my Dad.  I came to SL at about the same time that his cancer returned.  He had been a 10 year survivor, and then it came back with a vengeance.  As I became one of his caretakers, SL became my safe place, my escape.  And then I found out that I could Relay here, that I could fight against what was taking him from me, and do it as I sat with him, watching him.  I relay to honor my father and all those we have lost to

KR: I know many of our readers can sympathize and certainly relate to the reasons that have brought both of you to join the RFL, as well as many supporters who also have devoted great amounts of time and energy to donating and holding events to help raise money. For those who are interested and would like to join the RFL efforts in Second Life, would you like to share some tips and advice on how people can get started?

Stingray:If you are in Second Life, you are probably here because you have specific interests.  Find the community that you like in Second Life and see if that community already has a RFL of SL team.  Seek out a team of people that are already having fun doing what you like to do…through Relay.  If you Relay through doing something you love, you will likely find a more rewarding experience.

KR: Excellent advice for those wanting to get started with the Relay For Life, and I know there are many who would enjoy this as much as I do. People whose lives perhaps do not allow them the latitude to participate in RFL events in the real world, but with Second Life it truly is your world, your imagination. During your time spent with the organization I’m sure you’ve all had some very memorable moments, that you felt really exemplified how the RFL in SL has touched people’s lives, and shown what a virtual world can really do to help those stricken with cancer. Could you share one of those stories with us?

Stingray:For me, it came at what would seem the simplest and most meaningless experiences.  It was my first year as the RFL of SL Staff Partner.   I was standing on side the track, talking to a few volunteers in local chat when a dragon walked on the track behind us.  Someone yelled, “HEY! THAT DRAGON IS WALKING THE WRONG WAY!!”  It wasn’t about the fact that a dragon was on the track.  It was about making sure that the dragon was Relaying appropriately.  That was the moment that I realized that RFL of SL transcends real world preconceptions. And that would be the defining moment of my philosophy for being the American Cancer Society staff partner in Second Life.  I embraced the fact that this was a world that was only limited by our imagination.  By encouraging and empowering our volunteers in Second Life, we have been able to raise over $1 million USD and actually help avatars in their personal battles with cancer.

KR: The efforts of all those in Second Life have proven some of the amazing things that a virtual world can make possible, and I want extend a very sincere thank you to both of you on behalf of Krypton Radio and all those who stand to benefit from the cancer research you tirelessly help fund. Please feel free to share any final thoughts or shout outs you would all like to give!

Stingray: We just want to be sure to recognize and appreciate all of the volunteers, team captains, team members, donors, supporters, artists, designers, land owners, committee members, and anyone who supports our efforts across the grid.  The success that cancer patients have benefited from is due to the fact that the residents of Second Life recognize their own ability to make tangible differences in the real world through their online interactive experiences.

KR: Thank you all, and have a wonderful day, Go Relay!

Links:

• American Cancer Society
• Relay For Life of Second Life
• How to Form a Team in SL
• A history of RFL in SL
• Dwen Dooley’s RFL Instructional Videos

Incoming search terms:

• power rangers background
• power rangers mighty morphin
• power ranger vector mighty morphin
• mighty morphin power rangers masks

Want to keep on on what’s happening at Krypton Radio? Now you can subscribe to us on Feedburner! You can access our news feed from any RSS reader on any computer or smart phone.  The RSS feed icons in the upper right corner of our page take you right to it.

Krypton Radio presents the best in science fiction and comic book music, around the clock – and we’re heard in 83 countries around the world!

Get your geek on.

- 30 -

Incoming search terms:

• power rangers background
• power rangers mighty morphin
• power ranger vector mighty morphin
• mighty morphin power rangers masks

League of Heroes Joseph Button Memorial Community Center opened April 10, 2011.

“Look to the Skies” – The League of Heroes offers its message of hope

Krypton Radio Staff

April 10, 2011

The League of Heroes, also known as the Justice League Unlimited (JLU) of Second Life, honors and respects the memory and contributions of late League member Hunter Talon (known in real life as the irrepressible Joseph Button) with the opening of our brand new League of Heroes Joseph Button Memorial Community Center on the east edge of the Taber region, right across from the entrance to the fabled Ivory Tower of Primitives in Natoma.

Visitors arrive in an open, friendly public park setting, at a welcome area with kiosks giving guidance and information to newcomers about Second Life in general, as well as free clothes, tools, toys, furniture and vehicles to help enhance the Second Life experience for new arrivals. They can also learn about the many worthy causes and charities actively supported by the League.

Also featured is an amphitheater for lectures and presentations, markers placed throughout the park which provide information on the various public service organizations with whom the League works, and even a playground for child avatars. The Krypton Radio stream can be heard at the Community Center and is available for listening around the clock.

Justice League Unlimited on April 6, 2006 and has an unbroken record of peacekeeping and public service beyond any other superhero themed group in Second Life.

The new Community Center is offered as a gift to the people of the Second Life metaverse, and through it, the League offers the message of hope and charity to all who visit.

The stage at the amphitheater at the new League of Heroes Joseph Button Memorial Community Center, providing facilities for lectures, presentations and classes and a message of hope for all of Second Life.

Visitors to the Ivory Tower of Primitives will find the League of Heroes Community Center park conveniently located near the Tower's front entrance.

Right-click here and
‘Save As’ to download!

"Look to the Skies" - the League of Heroes offers this message of hope. Download this wallpaper for free - right-click on the link and use Save As to download to your computer!

- 30 -

Incoming search terms:

• power rangers background
• power rangers mighty morphin
• power ranger vector mighty morphin
• mighty morphin power rangers masks

An Investigative Report

by Vagabond "Tony" Carter

Shortly after my exclusive on Stark Reality Exclusive: The Wrong Hands-Spies on you, Tux Winkler posted a lengthy response on his public blog. In which he makes several accusations generally trying to play himself off as a victim. Keep in mind that we at Krypton Radio are not interested in getting into a blog-war with anyone, however in the interests of truth and public safety it is our responsibility to keep you the public informed on matters such as this. What started out as Tux Winkler and his group simply trying to stalk and harass the Justice League, turned into him stalking private residents with no connection whatsoever to the JLU or any Peacekeeper group.

Tux Winkler's 'base' owned by him displaying "The Wrong Hands" Logo, where he gives out his freebies.

Mr Winkler’s most common assertion is that he is not involved with and never has been involved with “The Wrong Hands”, however an investigation conducted by members of the Justice League Unlimited and Krypton Radio has uncovered a wide array of facts to debunk Winkler’s claims.

As shown in the pictures of Tux Winkler’s base/store, he is indeed a member of The Wrong Hands, even having his land and objects set to that group. It is a known fact that another person can not set another person’s objects to a different group, so this easily refutes his claims.  This parcel which Winkler maintains is where he gives away his freebies in-world, it also serves as a small base for The Wrong Hands. The simple fact of checking Tux Winkler’s in-world profile shows his connection via the use of The Wrong Hands logo, and directions to its main base in the region of Red Square.

Red Square and its connected region of Revolution, are the current home of the Woodbury University refugees previously banned by Linden Lab. And while permanently banned from the use of SL, these individuals have made very public statements antagonizing the lab as if daring them to ban the regions once again, along with the continuing actions of Winkler which serve to increase the exposure of the Woodbury University’s illegal return to Second Life.

Screen-grab from Tux Winkler's tracking page, now hidden from the public.In this screen-grab of the tracking page from Winkler's website, we see the long list of people who never consented to their in-world locations or login times being posted for the public to see. Winkler may have violated Section 8.3 of the Linden Lab Terms of Service forbidding the use of Trojan Horse programs in recording this information. Note that many of the detections in this screengrab list the location as Red Square, a closed region. This is because when location data was unavailable, Winkler had to resort to a simple online status monitor which reported its location as being on that region. His logging system was unable to differentiate between field sensors and his stationary online status monitoring device.

Tux Winkler had several accomplices assisting him in placing spy prims in various locations around the grid, without the permission or knowledge of victim landowners. Ryokashi Revestel is shown here as owner in these screenshots, and was one of the more prolific. Winkler appears to have caved to public pressure to remove or deactivate the tracking page to which these devices and his Trojan horse freebies streamed information.

The function of the trojan horse scripts in Winkler’s devices (all named “”#.- DO NOT DELETE THIS -.#”") was verified by independent testing.  When the scripts were removed from the freebies, the tracking page no longer updated with avatar tracking information for the current location, yet the freebies continued to operate unaffected by the removal of the script otherwise.

In the case of the spy prims hidden in various estates as stationary probes, in each case when the device was removed, the tracking page stopped updating for that location.

It is important to note that Trojan Horse scripts are in clear violation of the Linden Lab Terms of Service and are expressly addressed by the Community Standards. Also, there is no way of knowing what other “features” his spy devices have; remote chat logging is certainly possible with such a device.

The three major claims made by Mr Winkler in his defense:

1. Winkler denies association with The groups calling themselves “Woodbury” and “The Wrong Hands”: Proven false
   
2. Winkler claims that the “#.- DO NOT DELETE THIS -.#” Scripts are merely product support / updaters. : Proven false
3. Winkler claims that he did not employ spy prims, either on public or on private lands. : Proven false
   

While not unexpected, continuing in his counter claims against the JLU and its free networked security system known as The Phantom Zone, asserting that it uses IP detection and geolocation. It does none of these things. Readers are cautioned that Winkler does not speak for the League and to refer instead to the About page here on the Krypton Radio web site for further information about this system.

Winkler had been using the tracking page in attempts to blackmail some of the people listed on it into handing over chat logs or other information about, or from, the League. The individuals approached have turned over logs of the attempted blackmail by Winkler and this information has been forwarded to Linden Lab. These logs will not be printed out of respect for the privacy of the individuals who do not wish to be named or contacted by the public.

Residents are advised to delete any objects in their inventory created by Tux Winkler as a safety precaution, or if you desire to keep the object or item, remove the script called “”#.- DO NOT DELETE THIS -.#” to disable the trojan horse functionality.

In this day and age of armchair bloggers and forum flame wars it’s easy to lose sight of the facts. The facts here support the charges against Tux Winkler and The Wrong Hands for stalking, harassment and defamation. I know some people are rolling their eyes at this, looking at it as some grudge match between two groups. However, Tux Winkler has decided to drag innocent people into this and make it public, so before anyone tries to convince you of anything ask for the facts.. Ask your own questions and don’t listen to the rhetoric, judge the situation solely on the facts.

Update:

The land at the Superville region, once home to Tux Winkler’s trojan horse spyware, went up for sale sometime in the latter portion of May of 2011. The precise reason for the decision to sell is not known, but the usual motivations of economy and financial strain are the most likely cause.

Additional pictures:

Same prim, inspecting it shows Tux Winkler as the creator of the prim and the script.

One of Tux's creations, a spy prim placed on open land, verified by the fact that on returning it, the Tracker stopped updating for this location

Note the owner and Group this prim is set to...

This image, taken just hours after the initial publication of this article clearly shows Tux Winkler wearing a Soviet Woodbury logo belt buckle. This puts to rest any doubts that he has ties to Woodbury.

Tux Winkler's "The Wrong Hands" LinkedIn Page, which puts to rest any doubt that Winkler considers himself in charge of The Wrong Hands, proclaiming himself to be CEO of "TWH Ltd.". The page has since been deleted. He had posted his city of residence on the page, but this has been redacted to protect his safety and that of his family.

Incoming search terms:

• power rangers background
• power rangers mighty morphin
• power ranger vector mighty morphin
• mighty morphin power rangers masks

By Krypton Radio Staff

On April 2, 2011 – Love for Japan – Skye Galaxy performs for an appreciative and generous crowd.

Love For Japan Event

Many users of the virtual world of Second Life stepped up to join in the efforts to raise money for those in need, one such couple is SL and Real-world husband and wife team Roto Diesel and Mariella Deezul. They were the driving force behind the event, organizing the live musical show with their friends and countrymen of the Nederland sims.

The ‘Love For Japan’ charity event was held to raise money for supporting the Japanese disaster relief efforts, in the wake of the history making earthquake which rocked the country claiming countless lives and leaving even more homeless and in need of assistance from the international community.
Mr Diesel shared this statement with Krypton Radio on what went into the making of the event:

From the beginning we had three goals:

1. Collect a substantial amount of money
2. Make sure the money would reach people DIRECTLY: so not via some NGO with 80% overhead costs, financing a fleet of Mercedes driving suits…
3. Make the event into a unique SL music experience

Since we have some musicians here on the sim locally, they did the opening act of the event (“Hannes & Cath featuring the Dogband”). After then we booked two great DJ’s: Nurito Inshan and Greenfly Neox. Both offer a unique and original set of music, technically brilliantly mixed together in their own unique style.

For the main act we wanted a live performer. Thanks to our old friend DOVE (TheDove Rhode), we got in touch with Skye Galaxy. Right after checking Skye’s music on YouTube we knew he was something special. He truly is the most talented new musician I have heard in a long time… sl or rl!

Skye also is a very cool guy, who enjoys playing for charity especially, so thankfully he kindly agreed to perform at the event.

The day of the event (now we did more events, but we knew this one would be something exceptional) both me and my (rl and sl) wife Mariella Deezul were a bit nervous. Thanks to the effort of everyone at the sim here (Hannes, Viva, Beesie, Arjan, Youri) and the performers it quickly turned into a great succes! Laslopantomik Yao (of Yaslo Machinima Studio) filmed the whole gig and streamed it live via livestream. Laslo will create a cool video of the event soon also.

Isn’t it beautiful if so many people collaborate on something? I think there is nothing that gives me a greater kick then to see something like this event come together: so many souls collaborating for a good cause! ))

We planned to gather funds during the event in three ways:

1. Donations/ tips for the performers they kindly agreed to donate (/ agreed to play for free)
2. Mariella Deezul created 8 unique clothing products to sell at the event: all income went directly into the donation pot.
3. We organized a raffle with cool prizes.

Our initial target for the event was 50,000 Linden, but already after Nurito Inshan’s set we filled the first donation meter (the type of “tipjar” we used: set to a goal of 50K) up! Nurito dumped a PILE of lindens in it after he spinned: which greatly helped the effort along indeed! We placed a secondary donation meter with again a goal of 50 K.

When Skye started playing, the whole sim filled up to the maximum of 60 good souls. Donation meter was at 70K. It was TRUMENDOUS. A true experience, somehow comparable to attending a rl concert. People were truly moved by Skye’s performance, especially in this context. Skye performed for about an hour and a half (altho we only booked him for an hour). Although we initially planned to play some tracks after Skye’s performance, we didn’t… nothing could even come close to his musical genius.

We then drew the prizes for the raffle and did the event accounting. Since the lack of transparency in rl charity stuff disgusts us, we wanted to be 100% transparent with the funds donated to this cause, so we built a small info-kiosk at the venue, where people can review the events books and will be able to see exactly where the money goes!

We are currently gathering possible ideas what to do with the money. Still our goal is to give it to a small community or a family (or multiple families) directly. At the info kiosk people can see what possible goals we have gathered. We hope possibly people can give us more ideas and we also encourage people to tell us where they think the money should go.

Thanks to the energy and dedication of these good folks we raised L$106400 in 7 hours! (Approximately $426.00USD )

Mr Diesel indicated that an even bigger and more complex extravaganza was in the works, with plans to have it span four-regions in size with even more musical acts. All donations and offers for assistance on this next charity project are more than welcome he explained, saying to please contact him in Second Life for more information on how people can help.

Roto and Mariella wanted to give a shout out to the following people and express their sincere gratitude in their making the Love For Japan event possible:

• Hannes Breda
• Viva Enzo
• Skye Galaxy
• Nurito Inshan
• Greenfly Neox
• DOVE (TheDove Rhode)
• Mak Outlander
• Kazu99jp Alter
• Beesie
• Arjantje18
• Yourijohannes

Links to event content:

• Video Compilation of Event
• Skye Galaxy on YouTube
• DJ Greenfly Neox

Stay Tuned to Krypton Radio on this developing story on support for Japan!

-30-

Incoming search terms:

• power rangers background
• power rangers mighty morphin
• power ranger vector mighty morphin
• mighty morphin power rangers masks

By Vagabond "Tony" Carter

Some here may recall “The Wrong Hands” theft, via espionage,  of documentation belonging to the JLU. Scummy as that was, Tux Winkler has sunk to a new low… Using Second Life residents as pawns in his personal war against the JLU and peacekeeper groups in general.Tux maintains that he has no association with The Wrong Hands, or Woodbury, despite the facts otherwise, including documented Twitter communications with Tizzers Foxchase.

Tux has for several months now been tracking JLU members and other residents he has a grudge against on his publicly accessible web site. Despicable as this is, Tuxes claims that this is compliant with Second Life Terms of Service is correct from a technology standpoint – it  uses nothing not already publicly available to achieve his goals.

Tux makes the claim on his site that “This page simply lists the JLU members (former, confirmed, suspected and friends).  It uses only the tools provided by LL and no exploits.”

This is true, unless you count:

• exploiting residents, by utilizing ‘hidden’ functionality in freebees.
• exploiting land owners and open land permissions by hiding spy prims on their property without their permission
• listing not only online status but their locations as well, enabling the page as a tool for stalking residents of Second Life. See Terms of service regarding incitement/ encouraging others to violate ToS. While this last is not an exploit per-say it does sow the point of concern here. Listing this information publicly exposes those residents to harassment.

Related to these is section 8.3 of Second Lifes Terms of service, which states:

8.3 You agree that you will not post or transmit Content or code that may be harmful, impede other users’ functionality, invade other users’ privacy, or surreptitiously or negatively impact any system or network.

You agree to respect both the integrity of the Service and the privacy of other users. You will not:

(i) Post or transmit viruses, Trojan horses, worms, spyware, time bombs, cancelbots, or other computer programming routines that may harm the Service or interests or rights of other users, or that may harvest or collect any data or personal information about other users without their consent;

This functionality of the freebees , being hidden, easily classifies as ‘spyware/Trojan’.

The devices also appear to track not just League members and friends, but anybody with whom Winkler has ever crossed swords, or that might do so in the future.

On tips received , JLU members acquired a number of freebies Tux Winkler had created and was distributing to new and old residents alike. These items were examined and compared with Tux’s public tracking page. An interesting fact emerged: when the members teleported with these freebies attached the tracking page updated!

The Items identified so far are :

• “DISTURBED Online Status Board” – Rezzable Status board
• “E-Howl v2.1″ – wearable on AV communication device
• “PAO Hearts an Hugs” – wearable AV device to give hugs and kisses
• “-= Disturbed Photo Booth v2.05″ – rezzable structure to take photos

Each includes a script left no mod named #.- DO NOT DELETE THIS -.# Removal of this script does not harm the freebies in any way but, surprise surprise , the tracking functionality stops! This was verified several times and double tested by inserting the same script into a ‘blank’ prim, at which point the traces would again update.

Now, speaking strictly for myself, I have no real issue with my in-world location being known. However, the underhanded use of residents as pawns like this is utterly deplorable!

Until Linden Lab steps up to bat on this I am not sure if this sort of shenanigan is AR’able or not, so let’s not be hasty with those mouse clicks. I will say this however, if you do not enjoy being used as a pawn – if you feel as disgusted by this as I do:

• Delete any objects you own created by Tux Winkler.
• Share this information with friends and land owning residents.

-30-

UPDATE  4/14/2011

As of at least yesterday Tux Winklers public tracking page is giving the appearance of being down. I say appearance as the PHP script is still clearly there but returns only the line “404 – page missing”. This is not a genuine 404 error but rather the output of the script. What this means is unclear, but it does seem that at least the Location tracking has gone non public. I still advise residents to be wary of the above mentioned Freebees and other suspicious items.

Genuine 404 is a full HTML page, not a single line of plaintext, were the script actually missing the error would look like the following:

Not Found

The requested URL /XXX.php was not found on this server.

---

Apache/2.2.8 (Ubuntu) mod_python/3.3.1 Python/2.5.2 PHP/5.2.4-2ubuntu5.10 with Suhosin-Patch mod_ssl/2.2.8 OpenSSL/0.9.8g mod_perl/2.0.3 Perl/v5.8.8 Server at www.XXX.XXX Port 80

The actual URLS have been expunged for Krypton Radio Reader safety

The fact that the page is returning a false 404 error simply means the system is not publicly visible and may well still be in use.  It should be noted here that other attempts to generate a “page not found” error on Tux’s web site produce a genuine 404 error – only this one page on this site produces a fake 404 error, so this one is confirmed as a red herring. Were Tux to actually have removed the script the above example 404 would have shown, instead he chose to obfuscate, having the file jlu.php echo the line “404 – page missing”. Extra work, when simply removing the script would have done . We are left to ponder why, and this leads credence to the idea that there is more going on here than meets the eye.

Incoming search terms:

• power rangers background
• power rangers mighty morphin
• power ranger vector mighty morphin
• mighty morphin power rangers masks

Krypton Radio and the League of Heroes proudly presents the debut of a great new weekly show!

CAPTAIN KRYPTON’S SCI FI ROUNDUP

Only on Krypton Radio!  Each new episode airs at  7PM Friday, and then again at 9AM Saturday morning.
Set your iTunes, media player, smart phone or your parcel media in Second Life to http://listento.kryptonradio.com:8000 to hear it.
You’re going to love this new show.  And feel free to share this with your friends.  You just might make more friends!

Krypton Radio: Superhearing for your Second Life!

Incoming search terms:

• power rangers background
• power rangers mighty morphin
• power ranger vector mighty morphin
• mighty morphin power rangers masks

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.

Part the Fourth: A day on patrol.

Though patrolling is not our only peacekeeping activity, it is our most visible. Typically we patrol in areas where griefing is likely to happen, A prime griefing target has four elements, these are, that it has build rights so they may rez, scripts can run, so what they rez can wreak havoc, have open access so that they can actually be there and lastly have traffic so people will be affected by the attack. Outside of targeted communities, the most common scene of a griefing attack is a public sandbox, which usually has all four elements and no private estate management. Since it is public land, any response must come from the Lindens, and the Lindens won’t know about it unless somebody tells them.

The Justice League along with others provide the reporting necessary to alert the RESI team that something needs Occasionally a situation can be resolved without filing an abuse report at all. When we see something rezzed that violates the CS or TOS (usually something “broadly offensive”) the first part of a response is to contact the owner of the object and make them aware that they are breaking the rules and give them the chance to remove the offense before it has to go to an Abuse Report. I am reminded of one incident when I was a recruit and came across something broadly offensive. I contacted the owner about it, and he apologized. He had been acting out of grief of his own having a close friend that had recently died. He did not know how to direct his anger, and just a kind word from a stranger was all that was needed to resolve this situation.

Part the fifth:Tights? Seriously?

Probably the most misunderstood thing the JLU does is dress as superheroes. We have quite a few reasons for this.

In Second Life, one can choose every aspect of how one wants to appear in the virtual world. Unlike real life, the way one appears is completely decided by choice. In a world where one can appear as anything, how you appear can say something, as well as have strong symbolic context. We dress up as superheroes to symbolize being the good guys, here to serve and help like the characters found in comic books that wear spandex.

Wearing bright colors and flashy outfits also makes us natural targets to those who choose to attack. It is in our operating procedure to draw fire from others and make ourselves targets during attacks, putting ourselves between those who are trying to cause grief and those they want to be their victims. Lastly, we wear superhero costumes because it is fun. After all, if you are not enjoying your time in Second Life, why be there at all? We do what we do because we enjoy Second Life, and think everyone else that uses the service has the right to that enjoyment, and we oppose those that would make Second Life something where that enjoyment is taken away.

Meanwhile, back at the Watchtower…

Hopefully, you now know a bit more about our peacekeeping process, but that is only one part of the overall mission of the Justice League Unlimited. Not everyone in the league patrols, but we are all committed to making the grid a better place than how we found it. To this end we also have an education program where we teach seminars and classes. We, as a team, raise awareness and money for charities such as Project Jason to help the families of missing persons, and the American Cancer Society’s Relay For Life of Second Life giving service, time, and funds to these and other worthy causes.

The Justice League does not solely exist to fight bad guys, nor do we revel in seeing other avatars banned due to what we report. We are here because we genuinely care for the virtual world of Second Life and the residents that use it.

Anyone can be a Hero, its not about what scripted gear you have, or what you wear across your chest, its about the choices you make. I bet someone you know may need a hero in their life. Be that hero for someone today.

-0-

Links

The Justice League Unlimited is partnered with or works along side the following organizations, and others:

• Remember Our Friends Coalation
• Federation Council (International Federation of Trekkers)
• Project Jason
• Relay for Life (American Cancer Society)
• Four Bridges
• Police Department on SL

Incoming search terms:

• power rangers background
• power rangers mighty morphin
• power ranger vector mighty morphin
• mighty morphin power rangers masks

On  January 10, 2010, a member of the Woodbury University group in Second Life known only by the SL name of Haruhi Thespian gained illegal access to the secure, private wiki owned and operated by the Justice League Unlimited and stole about a third of its contents.  Thespian allegedly gained access to the Justice League with the specific intent to defraud the League out of special access to its personnel, assets and resources.  Thespian was supported by a gang calling itself “The Wrong Hands”, led by ringleader Robble Rubble, and comprised mainly of members of the Woodbury University group.  “The Wrong Hands” took its marching orders from Tizzers Foxchase (Jorden Bellino in real life, a student of Woodbury University of Burbank, California), who identified himself as having made the judgment call to publish the wiki despite what he called the “collateral damage” of exposing not only himself but many of his friends in other griefing groups.

The stolen materials were swiftly bundled and put into viral distribution.  The Second Life group, made up almost entirely of members of the banned Woodbury group, claimed responsibility for the theft. Copies of the BrainiacWiki began to appear on PirateBay.org, but were discovered to have been variously infected by virii and heavily edited by the posters and redistributed.  Substantial excerpts from the stolen wiki were published directly in the Alphaville Herald, by the editor pseudonymed “Pixeleen Mistral”, who was identified in the Herald [and subsequent Wikipedia article] as Mark P. McCahill. McCahill works as a consultant in the IT department at Duke University of Durham, North Carolina, coauthor of several of the initial protocols and services of the Internet itself in the early to mid 1990′s, and continues to publish puzzling articles glorifying the arguably illegal activities of “The Wrong Hands”.

The Herald is a newsletter blog owned and operated by Peter J. Ludlow of Northwestern University, widely regarded as a Woodbury shill site. It is believed that the theft of the wiki and the barrage of smear articles appearing in the Herald were in retribution for a successful operation conducted the Justice League Unlimited earlier that month in which several members of the Woodbury group were intercepted in the attempt to raid the region “Zeide Kamp”, a Jewish cultural center in Second Life. Public comments by Robbie Rubble (his SL alias, real name unknown) suggest that the theft and was motivated by revenge for the League’s interception of the Woodbury raiding party before they could reach their griefing target.

The League responded to the subsequent appearance mirror sites of the stolen materials by invoking the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to protect their rights under United States copyright law. Wherever these sites were identified within the United States, the copyright was found valid and the sites removed. This eventually forced the thieves to move these mirrors to servers outside the United States.  One such site, owned and operated by Tux Winkler, contains hundreds of pages of the BrainiacWiki, which now represents over 80% of the total content on his web server.  Winkler freely admits that he is hosting the materials, yet denies wrongdoing.

On behalf of the the League, Kalel Venkman ordered DMCA takedowns of illegally posted materials on the Herald itself. The materials were restored when the poster, “Pixeleen Mistral”, filed a response under the DMCA claiming that the identification was inaccurate.   No actual legal claim of ownership of the material or challenge to the League’s copyright was ever made, though the Herald provided information and instruction to its readership on how to pirate and distribute the stolen materials.

The theft and pirating of the BrainiacWiki exposed the activities of literally dozens of griefer groups within Second Life, resulting in a sharp drop in griefing on the grid over the past three months according to aggregate abuse report information available on GridSurvey.com.

The Plan Backfires

The articles posted in the Alphaville Herald about the break-in may have attracted the attention of Linden Research, Inc. Inside sources at that company say that their legal department had Mr. Ludlow  abandon the continued commercial use of the “secondlifeherald.com” domain name or face possible litigation.  The Herald had been using the term “Second Life” in its domain name for some seven years without obtaining a license from Linden Research for the use of its trademark, yet taking advertising dollars and building its business on it.  Ludlow’s response to the Linden Lab demand was to move his blog to its new domain name  and abandon the TypePad service, with whom he was already having business issues over the DMCA violations, but the old domain name is still in use as a redirect.  In the same move, Ludlow also chose a new hosting service in located in Canada, out of immediate reach of United States copyright law.

The smear campaign claims that the Woodbury University group in Second Life is being given unwarranted negative attention, but it has a long documented history of unsavory, sometimes illegal,  activity.The steady tirade of smear articles in the Herald  blog site also gained the attention of the real life Woodbury University, who may have found the infamous SLChan.com web site via posted comments, and reported the discovery of the site to Linden Lab’s legal department.  The result was a very fast forced shutdown of the site, owned and operated by Jordan Bellino, (a.k.a. “Tizzers Foxchase”, ”Tizzy Teardop”, “Joanna Falmer” and others) due to frequent racist and obscene content and the misuse and abuse of the real Woodbury University’s trademarks.

In June of 2007, a team made up of both of Justice League members and Linden administrators found a large number of known grid raiders on the region during an investigation of a location on that sim known as “The Shrine”, where they discovered griefer toolkits called “Phoenix Down” boxes provided for use by the newly created alts of previously banned raiders.

The Woodbury University group in Second Life was stripped of its official academic status by Linden Lab and banned by Linden Lab in July of 2007 when Linden grid administrators destroyed the “Woodbury University” region for being a major hub of grid raiding activity. Prior warnings had been issued to Bellino that his activities were in violation of his usage agreement, but he chose to ignore these. Though Bellino publically denies it, members of the griefing group known as the Patriotic Nigras have identified Bellino as having been a member of that raiding group, providing the original Woodbury University sim as a staging area for their use within Second Life.

Sources inside the Woodbury University group itself state that Bellino had been planning to purchase eight new sims and create a cluster of regions to be sublet to schools and universities.  The participation of both the Woodbury University group in general and Bellino in specific in the organized theft of the wiki may be doing little to add to their chances of success – in the meantime, Bellino appears to have hedged his bets by the acquisition of three new regions in addition to the original Soviet Woodbury:  Estonia, Animation, and Fetid Inner Sandbox.

Except for Fetid Inner Sandbox, purportedly a homestead sim, the other acquired sims were existing regions.  This suggests that Bellino’s funds are so limited that purchase of new sims was not possible.  If the plan to have the Woodbury University group reinstated as an academic representative group in Second Life had gone through as planned, the 50% discount that would have afforded would have made scrounging for other people’s used sims unnecessary.  If Bellino thought the deal might go through, he would not have committed his limited resources.  Krypton Radio theorizes that the deal may have fallen through, and that Bellino is near or beyond the limits of his operating budget.  Further, according to sources inside the Woodbury University group, two of its members are suspected to be employees of Linden Lab, allegedly embedded in the group as watchdogs to try to keep Woodbury University as much under control as possible.

Copyright Claims Debunked

The smear campaign appears primarily composed of a very small but very vocal group of Woodbury members and their friends.  In articles and blog postings appearing on the Herald and other places, posters used multiple anonymous accounts to create the impression of a public outcry and played on, and intentionally reinforced, misconceptions about copyright law and how it applies to the BrainiacWiki and its contents.

United States copyright law allows anyone to describe and comment on content copyrighted by others, especially in the case of private, unpublished works of research – a phrase which neatly describes the BrainiacWiki itself.  In fact, the Second Life Terms of Service specifically allow this, and one cannot use the service without agreeing to this. Further, users of Second Life access the grid on the condition that they  know that information like this is liable to be collected by automated scripted systems all over the grid and stored in off-world servers, with the blessing of Linden Lab itself.

Posters in the Alphaville Herald implied that because the copyright registration could not be found in the United States Library of Congress’ copyright search engine that there was no copyright.  This is also false.  A copyright need not appear in that online service in order to be valid.  The Herald’s claim that the DMCA takedowns were somehow invalid or illegal are therefore also false.

The smear campaign centered around the BrainiacWiki focused on the reinforcement of misconceptions, hoping that the public would read the accusations without looking any further, simply accepting innuendo, lies and half-truths as fact.

“Storing chatlogs on your own server outside of SL is a violation of the Second Life Terms of Service, as a form of Disclosure.”

This is false, for two reasons:  first, servers outside of Second Life are not governed by the Terms of Service, which relates solely to servers owned and operated by Linden Research, Inc.  Second, the Terms of Service themselves say clearly that anything you do or create that can be observed by another user of Second Life can be incorporated into a derivative work. This has been verified in direct, detailed and explicit language by Socrates Linden.

“Creative Commons licensed software was used to create the Bwiki, so the entire contents are free to copy.”

This is false. Creating a written work on copyrighted software does not assign the copyright to the creators of the software – if it did, most of the world’s documents would be owned by Microsoft or WordPerfect Corporation.

̶