SLAM Magazine

I love satire and I adore irony so when I stumbled across the SLAM Magazine site recently I was interested. It seems it is a 'hoist by their own petard' site and that appeals to me in a curious way.*

One of the first articles that struck me was one where the subject of the article, glitterati poses, and it's posemaker, the avatar Katey Coppola had been involved in publicly defacing a competitor's entry in a photo competition. Glitterati and Coppola are an avatar representation of a natural person and his/her business based in a social networking site, Second Life.

The appeal of this article was that the admissions and the pictures of the defacement were in the offenders own words and pictures as posted publicly on the Internet by the offender herself.

The really intriguing aspect though, was reading the comments, I suspect from the offender or cohorts under a 'nom de plume stating, offender's 'side' was not represented - yet the total article was the offender and cohorts own words!

The irony of this did not escape me.

* http://slammagazine1.blogspot.com/

Content Theft, Copying and the Next Step: ES and Glitterati

Update on the recent posemaker case:

Glitterati & ES. Now renamed ES vs Glitterati

A Glitterati customer says there is an ES pose like one of yours.
Glitterati responds with 'they must have copied the Glitterati pose" - and shares this publicly despite clear evidence to the contrary.

This action was not only unreasonable and proved to be lacking in fact but marked the beginning of the corner into which Glitterati had placed themselves.

The poses in question were in fact clearly evidenced as having been developed and up-loaded to SL by ES prior to not only Glitterati's, but also prior to the Glitterati pictures placed on their Flickr site. It is hard to copy something someone made AFTER your creation!!

The latter fact still seems not to have permeated the minds behind Glitterati.

Perhaps Glitterati is a little confused and thinks that ES really means ESP?

Now the reasonable person would would engage the brain rather than the mouth at this stage, but not katy. In what could only be considered either a desperate face-saving exercise or an adolescent temper tanty, she embarks on a very public ES witchunt to the extent of calling on others to join her in this flaming and bullying of ES. This is rather like the yell of 'fight' or 'rumble' behind the bike sheds at school - you all know the type. The crowd forms, the bully blusters but sometimes, the 'reasonable' kid has had enough and bites back.

When this katy-led witchunt evolved into defamation and libel and republication of such on several sites on the world wide web. ES has no option but to defend its reputation.

Being reasonable people ES undertook this through the procedures set in place for dispute resolution.

Recent update:

Katy of Glitterati has not yet responded in a counter claim on the poses that Glitterati ( note: NOT ES!) was asked to decommission. The decommissioning was based on a Linden Labs (LL) investigation in which it was claimed that the Glitterati poses in question were in fact produced AFTER the ES poses. Glitterati claims that they did not defend in the appropriate manner as they wanted to continue to hide their 'real' identities - presumably from legal action arising from their actions.

However, katy and Glitterati did lodge their own claim with LL citing that 10 ES poses were copies of Glitterati's. This claim was also taken seriously by ES and LL. The poses subject to this claim were decommissioned as the claim was investigated, The cited poses were compared, found not to be copied and ES owners lodged a counter-claim, citing evidence to counter the Glitterati claims in accordance with proper procedures

Notice the difference in behaviours here. One party hides behind an avatar name and uses the web and the false sense of anonymity to mischievously flame, harass and defame in a baseless manner.

The party subjected to this behaviour takes appropriate action using proper grievance resolution procedures.

At this point the status is as follows:

ES has:

1. Provided evidence to LL in response to the mischievous Glitterati claims,
2. ES has filed a counter suit in response to the mischievous Glitterati claims (NOTE: no hiding behind false identities here!),
3. ES has engaged legal representation to undertake the counter suit.

One wonders when katy and her 'family' at Glitterati will work out that far from teen high jinx, their behaviour has stepped firmly into the realm of law. No wonder they seek to hide their 'real' identities. A writ served may well cause some questions around the dinner table.

Content Theft, Misrepresentation, Fraud & Libel On The Internet

Content theft is a serious matter and is subject to a range of international and domestic legal remedies. Quite rightly. The monetarism of 'virtual' worlds and 'virtual' property has been addressed in recent court cases in the USA, China and Europe where such 'virtual' property and civil and criminal crimes associated with such property have been subject to legal proceedings and remedies.

Bearing this in mind, a recent event in SL has caught my particular attention. In this instance, despite all clear evidence to the contrary, one business owner has used their group and blog to accuse another of 'copying'.

The business person so accused has ample clear evidence to show that to the contrary that their accuser developed their product AFTER the accused. This evidence indicates strongly that the accusations are not only baseless but have no standing in fact.

Of course there are people who believe that making unfounded accusations, 'getting in first' will draw attention from the actual reality of their own actions. All it does is draw more attention to the facts of the case. The question asked is - prove the accusation. It will be interesting to see how LL deals with this particular case.

However, in the course of making unfounded accusations, another series of elements have been engaged by the accuser. In terms of business these may be considered to be more serious than the actual copying, which it seems on the basis of evidence provided by the accused, that the accuser may have quite possibly committed themselves.

To many, originality and reputation is significant. To have reputation and integrity compromised has the potential to cause damage, personally and in business. When this is undertaken with intent and without foundation the defense of 'fact' or 'truth' does not apply.

To reiterate:

LIBEL:

1. 1. A false publication, as in writing, print, signs, or pictures, that damages a person's reputation.
   2. The act of presenting such material to the public
2. 
   DEFAMATION - An act of communication that causes someone to be shamed, ridiculed, held in contempt, lowered in the estimation of the community, or to lose employment, status or earnings or otherwise suffer a damaged reputation. Such defamation is couched in 'defamatory language'. Libel and slander are defamation.

As time goes on, recent cases are addressing many of the legal issues that have caused some furrowed brows in the legal community in the past. Perhaps it is time for people participating in virtual worlds to fully understood that their actions may in fact, be subject to real life legal remedies and not merely TOS of a grid or site owner.