Copyright infringement bans upheld, or repealed?
by Tateru Nino 
Oct 16th 2009 at 7:00PM
Filed under: Culture, News items, Opinion, Second Life, Virtual worlds, Rumors
Last week, as you might recall, we covered a tale that really caught people's interests, and warmed the hearts of many a Second Life content-creator; That Linden Lab had run a bit of a sting, which neatly suckered a bunch of copyright infringers, resulting in their banning.
In the wake of that, a number of readers (indeed quite a lot of you) wrote in to tell us that you had heard that the bans of most or all of the those involved had been reversed within a day or so. While people do indeed circulate all manner of rumors, that would certainly be quite an interesting turn of events, so we got some legwork done to see if we could get to the bottom of it.
Firstly, there's a difference between a suspension and a ban, though many Second Life users use the terms interchangeably.
A suspension is a temporary thing. More than one of us here at Massively have been suspended from Second Life at one time or another by Linden Lab, though the reason for them were never actually divulged to us.
A ban, though, is something the Lab does rather less lightly, when they feel they're on far firmer ground. The legal contest with Marc Bragg back in 2007 was probably a factor in that.
"The team is good at what they do and account bans are not taken lightly – we're careful to make the right decision the first time," a spokesperson for Linden Lab told us earlier this week, "All of our abuse reports are reviewed by people on our specialist team, who include both the user's past history and the current report in making a determination about outcome of the report; because each review is done by a person, sometimes mistakes can happen."
"Because we recognize that, Residents have the ability to appeal if they feel the wrong decision has been made; abuse appeals are run by the supervisors, not by the same folks who process the reports. Most of the time, appeals don't provide information that would result in bans being overturned, but occasionally new information comes to light through those appeals that makes it clear a mistake was made, in which case we reinstate the banned account." That's a process you can find out more about here.
Insofar as this action was concerned, it appeared to be bans and not just suspensions, so the Lab was obviously pretty sure of itself to begin with. Also rumors of accounts banned with good reason being mysteriously unbanned do circulate among users at times. If you wanted to try to shake the confidence of content-creators, that would be one way to do it.
Per policy, the Lab's being tight-lipped about the whole affair and not really giving any information about the action or the accounts. Even so, a few of the involved accounts have been chased down – and indeed, they do appear to remain banned from Second Life.
So it seems that the rumor that the bans relating to this action were subsequently overturned is just a rumor, and nothing more.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
lysana said on 7:20PM 10-16-2009
Considering the amount of FUD that gets thrown around SL, the "it was only suspensions" rumor doesn't surprise me. I've been chewed out by someone for calmly debunking false claims about bots that fake being long-established users that strip your land bare of everything when you friend them. Nevermind pointing out that the application/server link cannot be exploited by a calling card. It has to be real, someone else said so.
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xslipperyx said on 7:33PM 10-16-2009
Is Second Life honestly relevant to this site? I'd like to hear some "pros" about second life and if anyone actually cares about it on here.
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Dale Innis said on 8:20PM 10-16-2009
Yeah, of course. Tateru's posts wouldn't get all the hits and comments that they do if no one cared about it. I play both WoW and Second Life, and I'm glad this site covers both of them. They are both Massively Multiplayer, and they are both awesome in their own ways. (And lame in their own ways, too.)
If there's a particular game or app you're not interested in, you could always, I dunno, not read the posts about it? :) The RSS feeds are even nicely organized by topic; that's how I avoid reading about stuff I don't care about.
ian said on 8:25PM 10-16-2009
This site is called Massively, right? Well SL is a lot more massive than virtually all of the other worlds covered here. According to A.C. Nielsen and others, it is only second to WoW in active users and has higher per-user inworld time than even WoW. So yes, a lot of people do care to read about it. If you don't, that's fine. Don't read the article. Why do so many MMO users seem to not be able tolerate if anyone's interests/experience-of-choice doesn't match theirs?
mpdivo said on 10:04PM 10-16-2009
Second Life is to the future of MMORPGs than UO was to the current batch of games.
The pro of the game is that it deals exclusively with player created content and is paving the way with all the copyright issues that go along with that.
It's an MMORPG that is totally designed as a social virtual world. There is no loot except for what you can make yourself.
SL Drama is second to none. Read about the creation of Mouse World if you have any doubts.
Finally, there is no better place to see virtual boobies than SL.
slippery, I'm not sure why you read Massively. Maybe for the Hello Kitty MMO updates. It's none of my business why you don't like massive tatas. I recommend though that you take a dose of postmodernism and realise that there are a wide variety of games that fall under the MMPORPG umbrella.
SL has passed its peak but it's worth watching.
Nint said on 10:11PM 10-16-2009
Second life isn't paving the way for anything let alone the future of MMORPGs. It's been out a long time and hasn't spawned any sort of follow up in the industry. The movement has and continues to be the theme park style of MMO rather than the virtual world.
Nadine Neddings said on 2:26AM 10-17-2009
Actually, Nint, there have been quite a few virtual worlds which clearly have SL in their crosshairs. With all its flaws, Second Life remains the benchmark for virtual worlds (a benchmark Blue Mars promises to raise, but only time will tell if they can live up to the beta hype).
To say it's not paving the way, is kind of hilarious to me. :) SL is to virtual worlds what Netscape Navigator was to web browsing, I'd suggest.
ChromeBallz said on 2:32AM 10-17-2009
To Nint: Themepark MMO's are just one kind of MMO. This site reports on MMO's, not just themepark MMO's. There's no reason SL should be excluded, especially since it lets you make your own game in it (and in fact, there are a lot of 'persistent worlds' you can join).
It hasn't been repeated because before WoW, no one thought it would last, and after WoW, no one thought it would be lucrative enough. This is changing with Blue Mars on the horizon, aswell as some others like it, aswell as more sandboxy MMO's on the way such as Earthrise and Secret World.
xslipperyx said on 8:32PM 10-16-2009
I like to read and I like to ask questions. Sorry to upset the fanboys.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U3d_fqDcN1s
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Adric Antfarm said on 11:57PM 10-16-2009
Perhaps the math placing SL behind WoW in a two man race is right, but I was looking at web stats the other day (which Tate hates, so shhh) and Massively gets more traffic than the top 10 (and then some) Second Life sites combined. It's not like it's bad business. If the market would support 20 NWNs, we would have them, but it does not.
Tate 's "personal" blog carries Second Life items and for some reason her classic site is still out there if you like 2006/2007 news. Save some money Tate and hand out site PDFs. Or do a book like that horrid Herald one I want a refund for.
However, I feel you pain not being in any other world, so just click on the link to filter out the non-SL noise here.
http://www.massively.com/category/second-life/
What was this article about again? Oh bans. Moot. I know a girl who signed up in her cats name and even aged verified. Ban her and she goes to the dog. The system is too weak to keep anyone out.
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Nadine Neddings said on 2:23AM 10-17-2009
Actually, I'm fairly sure that they ban by IP, but I could be wrong. You're right about the age verification farce though.
Adric Antfarm said on 9:12AM 10-17-2009
IP bans are not really effective. My provider didn't even care last time I asked them to renew mine for no reason. MAC even less given the box of 3C905b NICs I never get around to throwing away. There are proxies are well, but things like TOR are pokey and only handy for anonymous postings.
I hate to say it, but Linden may actually have to tie a person to accounts one day via credit card perhaps and maybe make sure alts are tied to a master account.
I don't think we need any more jail crowding, but I find it kind of odd were I to steal a bag of chips from the store costing a few bucks, the police would be called and I would be arrested. I would likely just pay a fine but I would have a record and should I continue the ramifications would ramp up. No one has any figures to offer, but I am sure people have been taken for more than a few dollars here and the worst that has ever happened is a suit best dealt with by bankruptcy. Pay off bills and dump a judgment.
It's so civil how civil violations are so very civil no matter the cost at times.
Ciaran Laval said on 5:44AM 10-17-2009
If you read between the lines of the blog of the person who releases the viewer you could see in his later posts that his initial claim that everyone was unbanned was hot air, he advised people to sumit tickets to try and get unbanned for a start.
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