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Second Life Mogul Challenges Press Freedom
Posted by
Zonk
on Sat Jan 06, 2007 05:07 PM
from the can't-take-a-joke dept.
from the can't-take-a-joke dept.
An anonymous reader tipped us to a post on ZDNet about some disturbing freedom of the press issues in Second Life. Content mogul Anshe Chung is filing DMCA complaints with organizations that post screenshots of her content, citing an infringement of copyright. From the article: "The issue has surfaced after the avatar Anshe Chung (real name Ailin Graef) was attacked by animated flying penises during a virtual interview with CNET news, conducted in their Second Life bureau last month. A video of the attack surfaced on YouTube, and was then taken town after Anshe Chung Studios filed a DMCA complaint. The Sydney Morning Herald and the blog BoingBoing have also received similar notices."
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Are DMCA Abuses a Temporary or Permanent Problem? 163 comments
Regular Slashdot contributor Bennett Haselton wrote in with a story about the DMCA. He starts "On January 16, a man named Guntram Graef who invoked the Digital Millennium
Copyright Act to ask YouTube to remove a video of giant penises attacking
his wife's avatar/character in the virtual community "Second Life", retracted
the claim and stated that he now believes the video was not a copyright
violation. (He had sent similar notices to BoingBoing and the Sydney Morning Herald just for posting screen
shots of the video.) His statements
in a C-Net interview suggest that he didn't mean to alienate the
anti-censorship community and was probably angry over what he saw as a
sexually explicit attack on his wife. But the event sparked renewed debate
over the DMCA and what constitutes abuse of it. I sympathize with Graef
and I admire him for admitting an error, but I still think the incident
shows why the DMCA is a bad law." Hit that link below to read the rest of his story.
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Pshaw. (Score:5, Informative)
I'm still here you bastards!
Re:Pshaw. (Score:5, Funny)
That was pure freedom. (Score:4, Funny)
Without even saying a word, whoever arranged for those pink penises to fly around like that managed to challenge anything the Anshe Chung character might have said during the interview. Such a tour de force only happens once or twice a decade. This video will rank up there with the likes of the "Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima" and the "The Unknown Rebel" photographs.
Heh (Score:5, Informative)
This level of 'brillance' is worthy of Paula.
Re:Pshaw. (Score:5, Informative)
(yes, it's Youtube, but feel free to wget this with a modified user agent to mirror.) [google.com]
Re:Pshaw. (Score:5, Insightful)
Why "rent" a tiny plot from some virtual landlord who thereby controls your server resources? Why are acreage and CPU power linked?
SL is a horribly designed system, imho because Linden Labs wanted to design a cash cow - have people paying maintenance fees on their creations when they total a few K in a database. If Ms Chung didn't exist they'd have invented her - someone to convince everyone else that "land" in the game has value.
What? (Score:4, Insightful)
Nah... The law is never abused.
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd rather the press retain the freedom to document what's happening. Even if their motives aren't altruistic.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Limits of jurisdiction (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The FTA between the US and Australia was supposed to bring Australian copyright law in line with US. The SMH would have been threatened with the equivalent law
this might be (Score:5, Funny)
Re:this might be (Score:5, Funny)
Re:this might be (Score:5, Funny)
Re:this might be (Score:4, Interesting)
The shape of things to come (Score:5, Funny)
In hundred years from now as virtual reality will be everywhere and has become a core part of our lives.
I'm sure old folks will bring back aging memories from real life
The Google Video Version, and Something Awful (Score:3, Informative)
Theres the video on Google Video.
And a week or so back, Something Awful's "Second Life Safari" documented it: http://www.somethingawful.com/index.php?a=4336 [somethingawful.com]
Re:The Google Video Version, and Something Awful (Score:5, Informative)
I don't really care. It's funny one way or the other.
"The people who ruin it for the rest of us" (Score:5, Insightful)
End result is likely going to be the IRS (or whatever the country's tax body is) horning its way into every MMO and online game, wanting its cut of the online proceeds.
To boot, if the DMCA is successfully used in this context, this sets a bad precedent -- post a screenshot of your character, go to jail for copyright violation.
I can see it now in WoW... before you can loot a purple item, you have to pay with gold or from your credit card your country's VAT. Screenshots are protected with some type of DRM system that only allows authorized computers to view the files.
I don't know who is worse -- the people selling crap in 2L for real money, or the knuckle draggers buying objects in that game. At least people who buy gold/platinum/adena/pyreals in a MMO like EQ or WoW are usually doing it to save time, rather than mindlessly farm, and that sort of can be understood.
Stupid. (Score:5, Interesting)
No. If your shit can be seen simply by logging into SL (which is free to roam around in), it can be posted anywhere. It's like clipping a Slashdotter's post and popping it on a site as a quote.
Now, I couldn't actually figure out what TFA was talking about, whether it was the SL staff involved, or SL users, but all the same, if it's the SL staff, people have no right to complain; It's their servers, and if they don't want you doing something, they have every right in the world to take you off, especially if you're one of those "free" users. People don't seem to realize that freedom of speech is restricted to political views and religion, and are rescinded while in private property. Censorship is wholly allowed in private.
Such a horrible "game" with a terribly whiny community, and this Anshe Chung person has had more press coverage than should be allowed.
Re:Stupid. (Score:4, Informative)
United States Code - Title 17 - Chapter 1 - Section 120
Scope of exclusive rights in architectural works
(a) Pictorial Representations Permitted. - The copyright in an architectural work that has been constructed does not include the right to prevent the making, distributing, or public display of pictures, paintings, photographs, or other pictorial representations of the work, if the building in which the work is embodied is located in or ordinarily visible from a public place.
( as quoted by http://www.glasssteelandstone.com/ [glasssteelandstone.com] )
Here's a copy of the court ruling in the defendant's (poster making guy) favor:
http://biotech.law.lsu.edu/cases/IP/trademark/roc
Urk (Score:5, Insightful)
She loves being in the news as long as the press is favorable, but one dildo attack gets written about and all of a sudden she brings out the DMCA stick. I will place a bet that we're about to see how mob rule on Second Life works. Attacks against her will most certainly be scaled up now that this news broke.
Re:Urk (Score:5, Interesting)
Disturbing? (Score:4, Insightful)
Now we have lawsuits alleging gamers don't play fair? Jeepers...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You're here, so I take it means you have nothing better to fill your boring life with.
And, I bet that you're not called "uvajed_ekil" in real life either, so there goes the fake identity bit as well.
She might have deserved it... (Score:4, Interesting)
Too bad we can't spawn massive dicks in real live. This would come in useful when our officials make an ass out of us on TV.
The extent of copyright is what? (Score:4, Interesting)
And when someone uses the DMCA take-down as a means to suppress others, especially in a creative or speech effort, there is certainly a cause for suit against the initiator.
I say that all people involved in the creation of the "attack scene" need to file suit against the people responsible for the initial abusive DMCA take-down.
This is a possible future (Score:4, Interesting)
The thing is, if the people who are pushing for ever-stronger DRM get their way, this is the kind of future we're heading for, over the long term. As soon as they come up with a mechanism that would make your shirt disintegrate if you tried to change the tailoring, you're going to have people arguing that it's their right to control how you wear your clothes. Disintegrating DVDs are just the tip of the iceberg... and the changes won't come in big obvious jumps, just a gradual erosion of our rights as IP laws and DRM become stronger and stronger.
Can't take a joke department? (Score:5, Informative)
Or maybe every instance that Prokofy Neva has called me a virtual Leninist griefing scum terrorist or whatever else has been on her litany of overreactions.
Anshe vs Furries (Score:5, Interesting)
Hillarity ensued." [nyud.net]
You know Anshe wouldn't get this treatment is she wasn't such a stuck up shark who abuses her position. No one has a problem with her being a business woman. The real problem is her attitude and her bad business practices.
I'd highly recommend that people simply stop renting from her, because the true cost (her attitude and DMCA crap like this) is really not worth it.
Re:Anshe vs Furries (Score:5, Funny)
I personally haven't really had any problems with SL goons. I actually really enjoy the Second Life Safari. These guys haven't seen anything yet. I've seen some truly out there stuff on SL, and yes, I admit most of it was furry created. Like the giant vore armadillo I made on a lark.
I made a gigantic armadillo that stands halfway to the clouds. This thing has a full digestive system you can go through, including intestinal maze. Whenever I drop it somewhere, people come from all over the sim I'm on to look at it and inevitably, go through it. Within five minutes you will see this thing basically shitting avatars. It's really funny when the rear end loving crowd flies up there to stare at it and gets hit by people falling out of the intestinal maze. I really need to make a vid of this sometime, as it's one of the funniest things I've ever seen.
I wouldn't mind if the SL people came and made fun of it either. I mean that is why I made it, just for amusement purposes. There's really not point in getting upset over it. Which is what makes this whole Anshe thing so sad.
You know, as easy as SL is to copy people (I've made George Bush, the Shredder from TMNT and others)... someone could make an Anshe look alike and do fucked up things to it just to piss her off. Of course then she will have to trademark her looks, thus banning all Asian women from Second Life forever.
Re:Ethically valid (Score:4, Insightful)
What privacy and dignity? Something everyone involved seems to have forgotten - This doesn't really involve her . Just an avatar in a "game". And even if it did, the content doesn't actually belong to her, it belongs to (if anyone) Second Life. So what gives this bink the right to go around issuing takedown notices???
It's unforunate this idea isn't part of law
Except, it does exist as part of (case) law - You only have a reasonable expectation of privacy up until the moment you go out in public. The only way this varies from the norm, she can go "out" in public without leaving her computer room.
Someone played a joke on her in a public forum. Someone else captured that joke for posterity. Nothing to see here, move along please.
(IANALBIRGL)
Re:Ethically valid (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that people are scared that the DMCA gives her this "cyber-power" is just another testiment to its utter malignancy.
Re:Ethically valid (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Ethically valid (Score:5, Informative)
My high-school Latin teacher used every opportunity to remind the class that in ancient Rome, a winged phallus was a symbol of luck and protection.
Just thought you might want to know, in case you start having nightmares or something.
Re:Ethically valid (Score:5, Insightful)
Civil Liberties guarantee a certain degree of assdom, because if they didn't, we'd devolve into a fascist police state overnight.
Re: You mean foolish (Score:5, Insightful)
I have never participated in "Second Life," but understand that it wants to mimic the real thing. In real life, if flying penises attacked someone on camera, I think that any attempt to repress the footage would be a task beyond any force known to man (yes, even Ted Turner).
Re: You mean foolish (Score:5, Insightful)
Whether publication is justifiable or not is irrelevant to its legality.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
And for what?
Truth.
If her life could be devastated simply by the revelation of her secrets--that is, without anyone doing anything unethical with those secrets once they're known--then the fault is squarely on
Re: You mean foolish (Score:5, Insightful)
Do you even appreciate the freedoms you have?
Re:Ethically valid (Score:5, Insightful)
I could understand your argument if it were a nekkid picture taken by a peeping tom in a persons bathroom, but lets take a step back, eh?
As far as "harm by omission" goes, isn't cumulative public opinion and devloping more's something that a court must take into effect? One might present logs showing a number of viewings vs. complaints lodged as a bit of evidence? Yeah, derivative, but I'm having a hard time finding harm on either side of this!
Re:Ethically valid (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Ethically valid (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ethically valid (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ethically valid (Score:5, Funny)
Are you brand new to the internet or something?
Re:Ethically valid (Score:5, Insightful)
If that video hadn't been published, I would have been robbed of possibly life-saving laughter. I would have been harmed. Yes, that's kind of sophistic, but the point is that it isn't so easy to define "harm", and frequently, in ethics, the magnitude of any harm (or any gain) isn't widely accepted to be the only issue, or even the most important one.
Let's turn this back on you. Suppose I claim that we should have an expectation of the right to pass on any information we want in any circumstances we want - UNLESS doing so would cause harm to other people. You may even be with me so far.
Now, suppose I further claim that this particular incident does NOT harm whatsername in any way that's important. Here's where you're going to want to fly off the handle. OK, explain to me why this "harm" to her, which has no effect whatsoever on her physical body, takes away none of her property, prevents her from doing nothing she could otherwise have done, and forces her to do nothing she otherwise would not have done, outweighs even the obviously pretty shakey claim of "harm" if I don't get a good laugh.
If you manage to do that, then you can try the really hard part... explaining why this notional harm that takes place in a game outweighs the very real and obvious harm to large numbers of people caused by people having control over all information about their behavior... or even the harm created by the chilling effect, if every time I publish something I have to guess whether some authority is going to agree with me as to whether or not it caused any possible kind of "harm" to somebody... especially if the authority seems to be willing to accept stick-up-the-ass, bluenosed embarassment at a joke in a video game as a legitimate form of harm.
Utilitarianism has sharp edges. Handle with care.
Oh, you're one of those people.
I remember the whole brouhaha when the "X-no-archive" header was created. That was before DejaNews came along, by the way, and DejaNews honored it from day one, so in fact you did have a choice about being archived by them, and you still have that choice, because Google still honors that header, as well as allowing you to rewrite history by removing your posts after the fact. Neither of those is a courtesy that I would extend to you, by the way.
DejaNews most definitely did not whip out some sort of magic time machine and recreate posts from the past. It's true that it got ahold of posts from the past, but it got them from archives made by others... and the existence of those archives simply proves that your expectation that your posts would evaporate was never correct, and was never reasonable. People were archiving Usenet in various forms from day one, and nobody ever had any control over who did it or what they did with the archives.
In fact, the early news readers used to print big warnings before you made your first post, telling you that posting should be treated as comparable to publication. There was never, even at the very earliest days of Usenet, the slightest reasonable expectation th
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I've read your original post and this one, and I think the difficulty is the same: your expectations.
The expectation that what you do in a public forum will remain private or that you somehow can control it an expectation you can have only if you can cre
privacy in the virtual world (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Note that it's perfectly possible for the owner of an area to disable object creation and scripts in it.
Re:Probably a case of self-defense. (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously? You think it would be "ideal" if there were laws regarding what kind of polygons people can put on the same screen as other people's polygons? Unless they are exploiting game mechanics, the "griefers" are just as much "playing a game they happen to enjoy" as anyone else. Oh, and it's a "reasonable explanation" for someone being able to use criminal law to avoid "unflattering" attention? Give me a break.
Saying that you are a proponent of free speech in the middle of that nonsense is a huge freaking joke dude.