Apparently there will be a bunch of intellectual property protests being held on the 5th and 6th of November in Second Life (where the Lindens don’t give a flying fuck).  According to the reasoning set forth in the thread, LL will care if 5 people stop selling stuff and lose money for two days.

They won’t.

LL makes most of it’s money off of the rediculously high tier they charge for private estates.  In addition, they don’t give a shit if people wave little prim flags that take two whole hours to load:  It’s their company, and by God, they’re going to run it into the fucking ground if they feel like it.  The only way to get their attention is by not paying tier, and that’ll only get you banned.  Someone else will buy the land, anyway, so it wouldn’t work.

You can also ask tough questions at the LL office hours, but then again, they regularly dodge the question by saying it’s a managerial decision (which it is), or ignore it completely.

Therefore, the only real course of action is to file a class-action lawsuit against the lab for failing to honor the Digital Millenium Copyright Act by failing to act on DMCA requests within a timely manner.  However, there’s a 97% chance that this will simply get laughed out of court (although Stroker Serpentine managed to do it with his sexgen crap).

tl;dr protests don’t do shit.

I got a heads-up from someone that Neil apparently tried to spam me/take down my site/something else. I saw an entry on his blog where there are a few references to doing so, but he apparently removed the post, possibly because he wouldn’t know how to spam me if his life depended on it.

Anyway, back to playing Dorf Fortress.

Freak windstorm, power outage imminent. Gonna go gas up the generator.

Linden Lab has once again shown us how much they love us by reportedly failing to include 3 crucial security patches that fix script-theft exploits.   These patches would have fixed last month’s rash of asset thefts, but it seems LL has other interests, probably related to paying off investors.

In addition, Neil claims to have an exploit that fetches assets, despite the new server rollout this past week.  Whether this exploit is the same that was used to grab assets prior to the rollouts is unclear.

More news when I get it.

[EDIT: ALL SOLD WITHIN ONE HOUR]

Two lots in Quantum Terra are available for sale for $25 US Dollars a month (about L$6750/mo) to help Darling Brody reduce costs.  The land is highly variable, as all tenants are allowed to change each other’s land.  Security is provided by Quantum Land Security, account age checks, and me.  Keep in mind the land is PG.

• Quantum Terra Southwest
  • 1024 Prims
  • 16,368 sq/m
  • Right next door to a combat sandbox
  • +50 -20 terraforming
  • Commercial or residential
• Quantum Terra Northeast
  • 1024 prims
  • 16,368 sq/m
  • Close to a combat sandbox
  • +50 -20 terraform
  • Commercial or residential

[*adds a new fucking category for this crap*]

Neil is, once again, whining about the “abuse” he is receiving.  This time, however, he’s claiming that his intent is not to violate the Second Life Terms of Service Agreement (he makes no mention of the Community Standards, indicating he doesn’t give a shit either way).  Let us analyse this claim.

1. His viewer, due to its nature of using exploits to obtain assets that are not supposed to be obtained, automatically violates ToS item #4.1, item V:
   In addition to abiding at all times by the Community Standards, you agree that you shall not: [...] Make any actions or upload, post, e-mail or otherwise transmit Content that contains any viruses, Trojan horses, worms, spyware, time bombs, cancelbots or other computer programming routines that are intended to damage, detrimentally interfere with, surreptitiously intercept or expropriate any system, data or personal information;
2. His actions of willfully distributing stolen assets via his blog violates Sections #4.1.5 (above) and #4.3, which deals with DMCA rights.
3. He also violates the GPL + FLOSS licensing agreement of the viewer’s sourcecode by not distributing the source code of the “Pro” version of NeilLife.
4. He and his users violate California Computer Crimes laws by using exploits to gain unauthorized access to the assets in question.  Similar cases, as documented by the United States Department of Justice, can run Neil a sentence in jail ranging from 10 months, to 110 months + applicable fines.

True, if the users were backing up their own data that they are the sole creator of there wouldn’t be a problem.  However, Neil was (apparently) distributing popular HUDs with full permissions, in addition to other popular items, so even if his users were not violating the ToS (which, for most of them, is not the case), he is still at fault for distributing exploits and using those exploits himself.

In addition, he also claims that by using the exploits, he is bringing SL’s vulnerabilities to LL’s attention, which is pure, unadulterated bullshit.  White-hat hackers usually work for the company, and they absolutely do NOT expose these vulnerabilities to the general public.  Gray-hat hackers, who do expose these vulnerabilities, occasionally for profit, are liable.  Neil is neither, as he uses exploits apparently nabbed from an unsecure PN SVN server to slap into his own viewer and to call his own.  He is a Script Kiddie. Nothing more.

This is a basic public service announcement to all the content creators in Second Life who are currently making a HUD or considering one.

HUDs in Second Life have a long history, beginning with the hackiest, thrown together bundles of scripts that formed during the beta process, and leading up to the user-friendly, fast, stable systems we see today. Combat HUDs and utility HUDs are a necessity of day-to-day Second Life culture, as they are able to deflect attacks, help with building projects, and other useful functions. Unfortunately, a new trend of aggressive competition has begun to seep out of the sewers from which it spawned.

In real life, aggressive competition is a necessity. Products are restrained by weight, heat, and size requirements, and therefore can only have a set of limited functions before they become too ungainly or simply explode. Different sized products have different market niches (I.E. handguns are marketed more towards residential users, whereas artillery can only be hauled and operated by an army of trained professionals), so competition to be king of the hill in that niche can become fierce. Corporations fight corporation for dominance of the marketplace, swapping out functions in their products for more commercially interesting designs and concepts, but they are still limited by the laws of physics and usability.

In Second Life, the laws of physics do not apply as much. A user can literally fire exploding train engines from their eyeballs without any recoil. Therefore, an interesting phenomenon has taken place among many combat products: They are all completely unique. One HUD deals in death-themed combat, another is geared towards vampire roleplay. One HUD has two functions, another has 1000. One HUD has five different interceptor shields, another has five different orbiters. All of these HUDs have completely different effects and behaviours, created through the desire to be unique. Most niche markets have been eliminated, as individuals are using multiple HUDs at once to reinforce their collective features against their individual flaws. One HUD may have better shielding and crappy attacks, while another has great attacks but crappy shielding, for example.

Unfortunately, a few HUDs have begun to follow the old-world concept of direct competition. They imitate many of the design and feature elements of another HUD in an attempt to dominate a marketplace that doesn’t exist. In a world accustomed to unique design, this understandingly creates allegations of copying and intellectual property theft. These HUDs choose to design their market around how they are better than a particular product, rather than simply stating the features of the HUD itself so consumers can determine if that HUD would reinforce their current armaments. If one HUD imitates anothers’ features, then a consumer is simply going to say, “Well, I already have all that. Why bother?” and move on to look at other products.

Content creators should stop pointing fingers at each other and start looking at whether they complement each other, or conflict. I’m not saying everyone should go on LSD and start getting into group hugs. What I’m saying is that, if you are imitating another HUD and find that your sales are low, you should consider finding interesting features of your own to add that would reinforce your competitors’ HUDs. That way, you can get more sales by luring in consumers looking to add more tools to their belts.

And while we’re on the subject, don’t disable a HUD just because people go to certain sandboxes/combat sims/roleplay sims. It makes you look like a jackass and discourages people from buying your products.

</rant>

According to an anonymous source, Neil was “laughing on Skype as people were getting banned”. The source claims that Neil was refusing to post a warning to his blog, until someone else posted a warning. However, he apparently knew Soft Linden was involved, but to save face, made up a report about Ariu filing reports. I have not been able to independently confirm this report, but I’ll do some digging.

For those of you living in a cave the past few months, a guy named Neil threw together an Emerald clone and added some exploits. He ran around naked for a while until yesterday, when Soft Linden swiftly delivered a firm boot to Neil’s ass by replacing an asset Neil’s users routinely steal with an object that phones up the Lindens and tells them who to ban. 50 morons were removed from the genepool.

A dramatization of what happened to Neil's ass

Neil, having his assbones crushed into a fine, snortable powder, proceeded to cry and shut down NeilLife altogether, showing defeat. In the meantime, he posted an incredible amount of whining on his blog, claiming that he and his users was banned for no reason. “No reason” apparently means “grabbing copyrighted material while using exploits that can get his ass jailed for illegally breaking into computer networks”. This isn’t even the stupid copybotting stuff, which makes a copy of the shape of the object, Neil actually told the server to deliver an object he wasn’t supposed to receive. Illegal under U.S. computer crimes laws, without any reasonable doubt.

Neil was not immediately available for comment.

To all those out there: Please send Soft Linden money for beer. He deserves it for being a cunning SOB.

[Update @ 2:44AM]

Been doing some Googling on Neil.


SL Name (Banned): Neil Elton
Skype: neil5050
Youtube: MrPoenta


This is all I can find, hope someone picks up where I left off.

[Update @ 5 October 2009]

For those of you wanting to verify this story, my sources are at least 3 very credible individuals who verified that Soft Linden replaced the object in response to a SEC JIRA regarding the nature of NeilLife’s exploits. In addition, Neil removed a post on his blog containing the asset UUID (used to be here). As it is a SEC JIRA, I’m not entirely sure I should be disclosing names.

As the new Phenom was released, a new, annoying wave of script theft accusations has come to my short attention span.  First, a history lesson.

QHUD is the latest incarnation of Quantum Core.  It was developed by Darling Brody over a period of several years and is now one of the hottest-selling combat and defense HUDs on the market.  For an idea of how long this was developed, she was working on Quantum Core back when Ian was still considering the formation of 7chan.

I have no idea what the history of Phenom is, aside from it being brand-new to the market and being a runner-up to and competitor of QHUD.  Owned by some guy named Ariu who happens to be a massive douche[citation needed].

Anyway, this crappy article isn’t going to write itself.  Here comes the science:

UI:

So if I were to flip one over and put it on a cake and lard diet while giving it a makeover, I'd get the other.... (Courtesy of Ariu)

Right off the bat, something is weird.

QHUD has a list-driven menu, but so does Phenom.   In fact, here’s the list of similarities since I’m too lazy to type them out:

• Radar with distances (Phenom has funny symbols too) right on the HUD.
• Scrollable radar list
• All of the buttons are the same, just in different places (and aside from the crudely-drawn stop and go buttons, Phenom’s look better)

Features

Okay, okay.  Maybe those are just coincidences.  The features HAVE to be different… Right?

(Note: Feature list based off of XStreetSL listings and the UI comparison above, since the chaos theory listing is rather sparse and tightlipped. Not going to shell out L$2000 for more HUD clutter.)

There’s probably some more similarities, but my fingers hurt from typing table tags. There’s also some tiny buttons at the bottom of Phenom that I can’t decypher without a user manual.

So, to be honest, this article doesn’t present any concrete proof that Ariu outright stole the scripts from QHUD. However, the similarities in features and UI are too glaring to ignore. If Ariu didn’t copybot QHUD and get the scripts via exploits, he sure as hell wanted to copy QHUD. If you’re designing a UI, you want the functions of each button to be as obvious as possible. QHUD is good at this, while it looks like Ariu was going through a thesaurus (You know, those things full of pages of synonyms?) to find different meanings of “Shield”, “Ally”, “Orbit”, etc.