No Prokofy, I’m not.

I no longer use your real name in conversations about you, and haven’t done for a long time. I don’t believe doing so is harassment in any way - YOU gave out that information, and the most likely place that anyone will ever come across your real name in connection with your avatar is the mainstream media articles you’re so proud of.

It would be a very poor method of harassment, given that you’ve already outed yourself much more effectively - as you’d know if you knew how Google works.

And I’ll let you have the last word, Prokofy, because I know that otherwise you’ll “fight back” until this page becomes 10,000 words of you screaming with rage.

If you think of it as a form of harassment, I simply don’t know how to reply to that.

The post about the “newspaper” was simply “inspired” by the fact that you linked to it on Twitter and because of that, it was the one I used in the example. I could just as easily used Second Life Herald, Your 2nd Place, SLOZ or others as examples, because they do the same thing.

As far as pulling out of the rental business, I’ll just say that I’ve found less challenging ways to make even more money. I wish all of the others in the business the best of luck, though.

If you think I ‘pick and chose’ among the TOS regulations, look at your Lindens. They stand idly by while my gender is outed on the forums and my real life is discussed. They stand idly by for 3 days while a giant picture of me from RL is kept in an infohub using a rogue script that keeps things from autoreturning — they can’t do anything about this until finally I have to get concierge, which isn’t supposed to deal with griefing. Yet they can issue a warning to me in a matter of hours over puny little Benjie’s ratting. Go figure.

You make a good point about the one-click option for littering or shooting or crashing a sim. And in fact the code-as-lawyers type abrogate the rule of law in this fashion, saying “If I can do it, it’s ok.” Of course, you can stab people in RL with kitchen knives, too, but just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.

The chatlog thing is of a different order, however. They Lindens didn’t have to put in a special function that makes it easier to save chat logs by automatically saving every single chat log. This isn’t cut and paste, this is something even easier that in fact doesn’t even require a click! So for the Lindens to put in a SPECIAL feature like this lets us know that they can’t really be expected to have people not use it!

You yourself wrote about pulling out of the real estate business. It’s a rational move and one that any one can respect. But it is because you find it too challenging, at the end of the day; others make it work, and not merely by throwing hours at it.

Your post that kept going on and on about the newspaper not being allowed to call itself that was a rant, and a broadside. I understood the point, I hear you, but I don’t buy it.

Uh, I don’t write my opinions because I am “facing failure and humiliation”. Your nasty “m’am” stuff is typical of how people try to harass me. What’s the point? Are you another male loser? Why are there so many on the Internet?!

Prokofy, the number one Google result for your two names linked remains the New York Times article in which you freely gave your name. No one is more responsible for the link between your real life and avatar names than you.

Only in your world could reading the New York Times and Rolling Stone magazine count as “going to great lengths” to match your real life and avatar names.

On the other hand you think that the rule about reposting private IM chat logs is a bad rule unless it only protects “individuals”. It shouldn’t be a rule, in your opinion, if it protects “bad” public figures.

My problem with your opinion on that is this. Who is considered “bad” and who is a “public figure”. Is that a determination that is up to the individual breaking the rule?

Saying that the service enables easy-one-click copying of chatlogs as a function of the technology isn’t a defense, at all, in my opinion. The service also enables easy one-click ability to disturb the peace, harass, prim litter, and set up gaming machines, but those are all clearly against the TOS, as well.

Also, I didn’t pull out of the real estate business because I found it “too challenging”. I pulled out because I speculated that land prices would be dropping, and the marginal profit that I was making wasn’t enough to justify the time I was spending in-game.

If you took the post I wrote about your newspaper as “bashing” and a “broadside attack” then I really do feel sorry for you and your inability to differentiate between constructive criticism and an attack.

At this point, you can come to whatever conclusion you want about me. Jealousy and spite have nothing to do with any of this, though. I’m not the one who’s facing failure and humiliation, here, at all, ma’am.

I’m doing just fine. How are you?

Are you able to grasp nuances and distinctions?

Again, I totally stand by the TOS rule against disclosing first life information. I stand by it because it is a just law. It coincides with privacy law in real life in real countries in real legislation. And I stand by it because it’s right, as a matter of morals and honor: in an SL debate, you should not invoke somebody’s first life information they chose not to disclose, and didn’t put on their profile. Disclosure of this information is wrong and actionable under the TOS; that’s a good thing. It ought to be more actionable than it is on blogs and such, but it’s the chief forums sport, outing people’s RL that they think will undermine them in SL.

That’s why pathetic dweebs like Ian Betteridge, Csven Concord/Sven Johnson and Benjamin Duranske/Benjamin Nobel go to this great length to match my avatar name up with my RL name. They imagine this forces Google linkage, destruction of professional reputation, denigration to family and friends. I know they think this way because when I do it right back to them as a counter-measure, they complain that I’m doing this to harm their reputation. Hey, if they can’t stand by what they say in both lives, their problem. I know I can. And I don’t care if there is a boss, relative, or St. Peter himself at the Gates of Heaven who knows that I’ve written that Benjamin Duranske is a major-league asshole — I’ll cite the truth defense here, and rest my case.

As I wrote above, parts of the TOS are just; parts are not just. As Bob Bunderfeld said about his reprinting of a log with Kona Linden, he and his lawyer will be defending his publication of a chat log to all comers because the service enables in fact easy-one-click copying of chatlogs as a function of the technology.

And any effort to try to silence dissenters criticizing public figures by invoking the “no disclosure” about chatlogs against THAT is unjust.

If the purpose is to give privacy to individuals, I’m all for it. If the purpose is to give impunity to bad public figures, i’m not for it.

Your inability to follow all these distinctions, your lack of feeling for what is just here and injust, is troublesome.

I don’t move the goalposts. I’ve always thought the same thing, for 3 years, and written the same things.

We discussed on Friday night because you hadn’t AR’d me in a malicious, specious act of sordid police-informant behaviour upholding an UNJUST law.

Today, you’ll be banned because you AR’d me and caused me damages, reporting me to the Lindens and getting me a warning and getting me in trouble. I’ve explained twice now how my rules work, and you are still acting like this is all out of the blue; is all arbitrary; is all unjust.

I’ll note that you as someone who pulled out of the real estate business as you found it too challenging have undertaken two broadside attacks at me lately. The first was to bash my newspaper, because it called itself a newspaper and not a blog. The second was to uphold your tacky little stool-pidgeon behaviour, implementing an unjust law.

At this point, I’ll have to figure your motives are the usual jealousy and spite that so often overcome young males like yourself facing failures and humiliations and facing resistance from older females. It’s a common pattern. I’m not interesting in repeating it with you : )

Then: “I don’t care if it is in the TOS of some game/world company. That TOS is unjust, and your cooperation with it is illegitimate.”

It’s pretty hard to hold discussions with you when you keep changing your view, anyway.

I also realize that you have your own beliefs of what can be tolerated and what can’t. The problem is that the goalpost seems to keep moving.

Two days ago we were discussing things, then at 8:00 this morning (apparently because LL issued a warning to you, this morning) you decide that you’ll ban me from your land, too.

In my opinion, I did everything right by reporting you. We all agreed to the same TOS, like it or not.

1. You must post with a SL name — that’s to force all those anymous trolling idiots who just want to take a potshot at you to prop up their lame lack of self-esteem to put a name to that statement, and stand up to it at least in the virtual world.

2. You must not incite harm, or commit real harm, to me in real life or Second Life. So that doesn’t mean you can’t criticize me; it doesn’t mean you can’t write the most hateful things you wish — you may. But what you cannot due is start to incite harm. Accusing someone of libel *is* inciting harm. That means you raise the issue that you might prosecute them and cause them damages. When someone reaches that phase, I don’t see why I need to support them on my blog or my land.

And by the same token, someone abuse-reporting me inworld speciously, over a petty matter of a neuralgic little retard sputtering over someone criticizing his lame and pathetic IMs and publishing them in chat, is inciting damage. That caused LL to issue a warning to me in their system — that *is* damage. Enough of those, and quite possibly I could lose my land through expulsion. That’s wrong — to settle scores in that fashion, and to try to prevail in a debate

I don’t know how I can make it more clear. You said you AR’d me, and also incited Duranske to AR me. Therefore, you are not welcome to publish on my blog, or come on my land to my discussions as you are *causing damage*. I don’t imagine why you think it should be otherwise. What you did was wrong. I don’t care if it is in the TOS of some game/world company. That TOS is unjust, and your cooperation with it is illegitimate. If you can’t grasp that, there’s little reason to hold discussions with you anyway.

Here’s my rebuttal to Duranske:
http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2007/09/benjamin-durans.html

Take the high road all you like, champ. I have no need to be posting on your blog, unless to correct malicious statements against me. You didn’t do anything right by reporting me, like a sordid little police informer, using a wrongful law, that will be removed from the TOS soon anyway, as even the Lindens realize how insane it is.

I didn’t undermine justice by exposing the lame, pathetic, and wrongful blandishments of Benjamin Duranske. He was insisting that I shut up, and also wheedling and trying to get me to agree to his specious notions of what “an attack” means and subject to his whims, in exchange for the ‘privilege’ of posting on his blog. This is obvious. I’m sorry you don’t see it. I realize you are set in your own belief of “justice” so I leave you to it!

One of the last things I said was “Even though I may not agree with you on some things, I still totally respect what you have to say. The abuse reports are a technical feature of SL, just like kicking people from your property is.”

Is it the fact that I didn’t ban somebody from commenting on my blog who is banned from yours? The fact is, I don’t ban “anybody” except legitimate spammers, on any of my blogs or web sites.

Even if major supporters of the caliphate were to come by and start commenting, I wouldn’t ban them, as long as they weren’t “promoting” something, and just commenting.

I think the only person that has ever called me abusive, now, is you. There was nothing “unjust” about filing an abuse report. By doing something that allows people to file ARs on your account you put “yourself” in the position of being suspended and losing property.

If you think that I am causing you RL harm by sending an AR, you have every right to think that. If I was to break any rules, I would expect people to report me, though. This is less about “you” and what you believe than it is about morals and what I believe.

Ban me from your meetings, your land, and your blogs, if you want to. Just know that I won’t be banning you from mine. I can take the high road on this because I know what I did was right.

As far as “supporting an agenda that undermines justice and human rights”, I’m doing nothing of the sort, and never would. You have every right to say and do what you want, except when it undermines justice, which is exactly why the AR was filed.

And again, if you find the means by which I oppose this too severe, let me break it down to you, it perfectly matches the viciousness with which this sort of oppressiveness is undertaken in the first place, to use the power of RL credentially and the thread of the ability to invoke real-life legal authorities to harass people whose views you dislike in Second Life, who challenge your unseemly and illegitimate grab for power.

IN real life, public figures who spoke to you “privately” couldn’t get you warned or banned or arresetd. That would be insane. Try to picture the real-life equivalents of this situation to get a grip.

I see Duranske is at it again, printing ridiculous, tendentious, self-serving crap on his blog again, so I’ll be rebutting it line by line.

I really find it nasty that you partake in this, Stranger, and now unfortunately, as much as I’d like you to take part in discussions, I’m going to be banning you from my land, too. Why? Because I have rules for when I ban people — online Duranske, who thinks that having only me banned from his blog somehow excuses him from having a rationale to do this banning.

If you come on my land and abuse-report me for reporting the comments of a public figure, who is trying to crash a publice meeting and is being abusive and needling, whose remarks are published precisely as a curb on his behaviour as the only recourse (naming and shaming), and you can’t grasp what is just about this and unjust about his ARing, and letting the sordid Linden tools do your dirty work for you, then you are abusive yourself. Taking part in an operation to rack up “warnings” on my account could threaten me with banning and loss of property. Those are serious damages, and unjust actions.

His arrival at this meeting, in which no one had discussed him up to the point at which he burst in (after no doubt being iM’d by some little crony), and which no one was much interested in discussing him when he was banned (except the trolls in the meeting) was the childish thing. I don’t imagine you came there for any other purpose but to take part in the discussion, but ARing me for publishing his pathetic little emotional-blackmail remarks is really surprising to me. It simply shows lack of maturity and character, in my view.

This isn’t a question of “dialogue” and “listening to his side”. When someone bans me from their blog for no demonstrable reason (there is nothing I said on his blog that is offensive by any stretch of the imagination), just to do a little muscling and power-mongering, I fight back. They get the boot from my land, too.

The meeting had in fact already ended. There were exactly 4 people there, 2 people speaking in I think Brazilian or something, and Cocoanut, and me, when I returned after taking care of a griefer for a tenant.
And of course Benjamin, skulking under the build on Linden land, like some character in a Shakespeare play.

I don’t see why I’m supposed to “give a chance” to someone who has *banned me from their blog arbitarily” and sets up little hoops to jump through (there’s nothing demonstrably attacking him “personally” on his blog before he banned me; so one can see that he take arbitrary and whimsical notions of what is a personal attack). Where were you, Stranger, when he banned me from his blog? Why aren’t you upset about *that*? This double standard never ceases to amaze me.

Again: I criticized him on my blog, and other blogs. He kept banging on me in the comments, even at 3:00 am his time. He demanded that I call him on Skype to “settle things”. He couldn’t BEAR being criticized. He kept banging, and threatening. He banned me from his blog, but in fact I don’t ban people from my blog on whims like that, or retaliations; I only ban them once they cause me damage. So once he bag threatening me with libel (!) I banned him for violating Rule No. 2 on my blog: no inticement or cause of damage.

I’m glad you can see that the rules of SL enable people to get SL and technology to do their dirty work for it. And that’s why SL is indeed a dirty business. And that’s why I fight back against these tools.

When it turned into what felt like a fifth grade after-lunch school recess, that’s when it went wrong. The discussion clearly involved Benjamin Noble, and the fact that he posted what he did on his web site. If it weren’t for that, I highly doubt there would have been much discussion, at all.

I can understand how you would want to kick him from the meeting, but I think that just listening to his side of it might have gave others an understanding of what’s going on. Instead, you didn’t want anybody to listen to him, so he was kicked.

As the meeting was winding down (there were still more than 10 people there) you pasted in text from the IMs that you were having with him into the public chat. Not giving him a chance to say anything during the discussion, but then posting things that he said in a private IM with you (as well as posting it on your site) isn’t childish?

You said “I think most people would just roll their eyes at the childishness of ARing someone just because you don’t like them, and what they said about you, trying to get a technical feature of SL to do your dirty work for you.”

I’m actually rolling my eyes, too. I never said that I didn’t like you, at all. Even though I may not agree with you on some things, I still totally respect what you have to say. The abuse reports are a technical feature of SL, just like kicking people from your property is. I guess we both had SL do our dirty work, huh?

It also sounds like what you said about the rules of SL being clear and “standing by it” were “Hyprokisy”, though… you’re right… it is a pathetic sport.

Where were all the people concerned about “hypocrisy” then? Nowhere. They felt it was fine, and urgently and publicly “necessary” to out the private details of a public persona they didn’t like.

If that’s the community norm, then outing Duranske’s petty little pathetic IMs is a public task as well, eh, Stranger?

I think if you spend less time trying to catch me in “Hyprokisy,” which is such a little pathetic sport, and try to argue your own argumentation in this debate about why you think a caliphate won’t spread (look at the historical maps, please), it will be more effective.

Just because you uphold one part of the TOS, doesn’t mean you are obliged to hold up all of it. Parts of it are unjust, or stupid, or poorly worded. Parts of it are routinely ignored or not interpreted in such a way to deal with obvious problems like sign griefing. I don’t see anything sacrosanct about the TOS. The first-life disclosure rule is one that the Lindens themselves routinely break, and since it *is* their TOS and they *do* think the whole thing is worth defending by making us sign it, I *can and should* call them on it.

What is wrong is that it is not on its own sim, Stranger, not at all — and that’s your first biggest delusion. Something on its own sim doesn’t send out press releases to the entire SL media; try to get the Lindens to attend it; and try to get liberal groups like the SLBA to endorse it tacitly. THAT is their goal; to try to worm their way into all kinds of civil society entities, from Linden to the SLBA to meetings and blogs, and get the drumbeat going: criticizing us is wrong, if you criticize us, you are hateful; we are for dialogue, and yet you criticize us intolerant; we’re the tolerant ones, you aren’t, etc. etc. It’s a propaganda technique, and you have to cut through the crap, Stranger. If you chose to focus on your belief that I’m the illiberal or childish person here merely because I take the strong stance *against* the illiberality of the caliphate, and the childishness of Duranske, that’s fine. I’m happy to endure that on the way to getting other people to realize just how insidious this stuff is.

What I find ABSOLUTELY HILARIOUS is the utter hypocrisy involved in this smarmy little police informant exercise of ARing me. I think most people would just roll their eyes at the childishness of ARing someone just because you don’t like them, and what they said about you, trying to get a technical feature of SL to do your dirty work for you.

And, hey, your friend Benjamin Duranske, banned from my sim, was trying to eavesdrop from the next sim over. That’s called “Remotely monitoring conversations,” and yet nobody is concerned about THAT, apparently, even Lindens.

Eventually, the Lindens will be dropping this as an offense, as it is not possible or reasonable to defend. And that’s why lots and lots of people have to ignore it, when in the public interest. When a meeting is public, about public issues that affect us all, about the public behaviour of public figures like Duranske trying to affect global policies and tools in Second Life, by God, we sure *do* have to publicize what they are up to, in order to preserve the liberties we do have, such as they are, in SL.

Oh, I totally resist the “disclosure” notion regarding chat as it is unjust — the client in fact now contains a tool to log chat logs on to your hard drive, and anything that contains a tool like that, but then doubles back and tries to instill a socially-defended policy, is doomed to failure. Sorry, but live by the sword, die by the sword. You all love to assert the wonders of technology; assert them to the end.

I noticed Bob Bunderfield, who reproduced the chat log with Kona Linden about a matter of public interest, from a public official, defied all the smarmy fanboyz telling him he was “in violation” and made the same point I’m making: a) it’s a matter of public interest that shouldn’t be in the private domain; b) there is a tool right in the client to make chat logs now even easier, and that simply defies any logic that says therefore copying and distributing them is wrong.

It’s a moral concept woven into a legal precept that just isn’t workable.

I don’t see tht there is ever a reason to disclose someone’s real life in SL that would be of compelling public interest. I can’t think of one. Perhaps there is, and it might be necessary in some extreme situation. But as a rule, I think it is reasonable and just to leave people’s private lives and first life info out of any SL debate.

It’s not reasonable and just to let them get away with whining little pathetic blandishments to get you to buckle to their censorship and appear on their blog, or let you have them return to your public meetings.

BTW, I’m having another meeting on this subject tonight.

I don’t think people’s private chat should be published — it’s an invasion of privacy. But this is a public meeting. And Duranske is a public figure, and I’m a public figure. His IMing me with little whiney complaits about banning is something that needs to be exposed, as part of curbing his bad behaviour. It’s the only tool available.