1. I have to agree with you. I think that he should have at least posted to the forum or PMed the admin to take care of it. Would have made sure at least that he'd gotten through, rather than hunting for an old email.

Posted at 12:39AM on Nov 25th 2006 by Simon Eureka

2. Hmmm: well, an alternative perspective could be that an even slightly responsible forum administrator should feel compelled to remove stolen code posted on their site without even being asked.

Mind you, I don't know the circumstances at all- the couple times I looked, SC seemed a bit too drama-ridden for my tastes, so I've kept my distance. Perhaps the post containing the code itself wasn't obvious. Either way, it's unfortunate, but is a typical sort of "comedy of errors".

Posted at 1:12AM on Nov 25th 2006 by Tomas_Hausdorff

3. This is a very important blow for freedom that Apotheus has struck -- he's actually gotten a DMCA takedown notice to work on something copied in SL -- by a brazen, obnoxious, malicious anonymous asstard like SloppyBot, who was very likely a v-5 alt.

I'm very glad to see that for one, the rat's nest that always has people in it like Aimee who threaten others with legal action over perceived slights and fake issues of "libel" got a taste of its own medicine.

Aimee has never adequately explained why she finds this cesspool of anonymous griefers from v-5, multi-alti manipulators, copybotters and sloppybotters and outers of RL and harassers and stalkers a place she calls "home" and her place for "me" time.

The post containing the code was more than obvious. And Aimee seems curiously blind to the glaring problem of an AWOL forum administrator who can't even control his own site with a normal email address -- what, he never heard of spam filters???

Add to this some of the really nasty practices of SL -- like forcing an ugly forums avatar on you if you refuse to get an avatar of your own, and piling on with grief sprees that don't shrink even from grabbing your RL and spewing it on the pages there to be mocked and trampled, I think this site got what was coming to it, and long overdue.

Posted at 1:52AM on Nov 25th 2006 by Prokofy Neva

4. Are you serious, Prokofy and Tomas? You do really think that the administrator of an open forum is responsible to monitor each and every post on his/her own site and censor it if they pre-emptively if they think it violates someone else's rights, with no request whatsoever from those third parties?

Think about it, that's what a totalitarian state would love: censorship through preemptive, pervasive screening and fear. That's what happened in the past and continues to happen nowadays to many journalists and activists in China and other even less free countries. Commie-repulsed Prokofy can't seriously ask for it.


On the other hand, I don't think Apotheus Silverman should have done much more before filing a DCMA complaint *IF* the incriminated code contained potentially exploitable informations to attack SLExchange.

Posted at 5:43AM on Nov 25th 2006 by Kitten Lulu

5. Prok: "The post containing the code was more than obvious. And Aimee seems curiously blind to the glaring problem of an AWOL forum administrator who can't even control his own site with a normal email address -- what, he never heard of spam filters???"

Well no actually, the post containing the code was not obvious. No one knew if the code was real or what it was. No one was paying attention to the little twit posting nonsense. People post scripts on forums all the time. Is an administrator supposed to check and translate and investigate every script posted to be sure it is actually written by the poster and not copied?

And isn't this your forum Prokofy?
http://prokofyneva.s10.forumsplace.com/index.php
The one with the apparently awol admin and no spam filters? As long as you have that up and running and choose to apparently ignore it, you run the risk of being hit with the same kind of accusation at any time.

Mistakes happen. A forum griefing twit posted something that wasn't easily identifiable by anyone but the person who actually owned it. That's something any admin would miss.

Apotheus states that he found the old dead email address by searching the forums. Well then he should have easily seen the Announcements forum right there at the top of the page with the admin's name all over it. He could have easily PMed the admin at any time and out of respect, he should have.

Posted at 4:03AM on Nov 25th 2006 by Allana Dion

6. Maybe some one sent him a link to SC and ”helped” him..

Posted at 4:22AM on Nov 25th 2006 by /Tina (PetGirl) Bergman

7. The post was indeed obvious, and Apotheus was more than correct in issuing a takedown notice -- the sort of thing all of you are so quick to threaten when YOU feel like it.

In fact, it wouldn't matter if it wasn't in a visible place; the code for CopyBot wasn't in an obvious place for everybody, yet people grabbed that and caused havoc in SL. Code is code, and if it is open, people can find it and grab it -- it doesn't mitigate it if it is somehow less visible on a site anyway,

I don't see what my forums for the police blotter has to do with anything. I'm not "Awol" but I'm not getting answers from the AWOL site administrators about some glitches on their web hosting services which they take money for. If it isn't very active, why would that be of your concern? It hardly gets a fraction of SC, which was a site where SloppyBot got a huge collection of eyeballs for his nefarious doings for days.

If someone posts code or copyrightable material on my forums, unlike Mother Stuchka, who couldn't answer to a normal email, I'll be able to reply and remove anything of concern.

My, you continue to be nosy, belligerent, and persistent with the hate posts, Allana, it really is unseamly. SloppyBot did something wrong; Mother STuchka/FIC wasn't on the ball, though he constantly posts and has the time to do things like impose avatars on people; and Apotheus was completely within his rights and did absolutely the wrong thing. Rather than recognize that supreme rightness of what he did under the law, you try to pick away at it and thereby join the lawlessness that is the hallmark of the ill-named Second Citizen.

Posted at 12:05PM on Nov 25th 2006 by Prokofy Neva

8. *did absolutely the wrong thing

I mean did absolutely the RIGHT thing, and did NOT do the wrong thing as you claim

Posted at 4:41AM on Nov 25th 2006 by Prokofy Neva

9. Nice write up, and thanks for the chat Aimee.

@AWOL Admin: There are currently: Threads: 4,604, Posts: 89,977, Members: 1,474 at SC. Last time I did a statistics on the forums, we were getting close to 1000 new posts a day, weekdays, on SC. I am the only admin at SC, and expecting me to see every-single-post there is ridiculous and unrealistic. This accusation that I wasn't on the ball is just stupid and shows that you will pick at any little scrap of detail like a vulture/scavenger would, fill your belly with it, then shit out nonsense afterwards.

@Email: I have no problem checking my email thank you, but the one Apotheus dug up from wherever he did, was no-longer-in-use by me, which is why I removed it from SC months ago. I have plenty of contact info in my sig which includes ways to reach me WITHOUT being a member on Second Citizen. Email is not my first choice, and never is, considering the amount of wayward Emails, personal and business, that I've seen disappear into the nether for no good reason. The spam issue had nothing to do with filtering as a recourse, Prokofy. It was the reason I stopped using that email. SC was hacked, my email account was included in that, and that account was flooded with several thousand nonsensical emails for a period of at least a week and a half after the attack. It made that account unusable. Therefore I made public, alternative, PREFERRED options for contacting me (IM in SL, PM, YAHOO).

Prokofy Neva doesn't exist without a rant, so I saw this one coming a mile away, and joked about it in Yahoo with someone while SC was down. Yeah, that's right, Yahoo, one of several ways to reach the Admin! oO

-FIC

Posted at 7:05AM on Nov 25th 2006 by Mother (FIC) Stuchka

10. notheing

Posted at 11:52AM on Nov 26th 2006 by korean_veco@hotmail.com

11. Hate posts? Show a single hateful post I've ever made. Oh right, that would mean any one that disagrees with you. I don't hate you or anyone else. I'm simply not in agreement with you.

I believe I DID state that whoever was behind sloppybot was wrong when I referred to them as a griefing twit.

I simply don't agree that the average administrator would have been aware of what that posted code meant or who it belonged to, none of the people who read it and ignored it knew.

I don't agree that Apotheus handled it well, it wasn't possible for him to search the forum and find that old unused email while somehow missing the obvious means of contacting Stuchka.

Posted at 2:36PM on Nov 25th 2006 by Allana Dion

12. I'm going to take a bit of my peaceful tea time to agree with Allana. I agree that Sloppybot is a twit, I agree that it was NOT possible for the admin to be aware of what the script really was. Even the three or four posters in that thread were confused and suspicious about it, and I agree that Apotheus did NOT handle the situation very well. :)

Posted at 3:02PM on Nov 25th 2006 by Squeedoo S.

13. I am inclined to agree with most of the posters here.

1. Posting the SLExchange code was wrong. Removing it was the right thing to do.

2. As I recall, nothing about SloppyBot's post indicated it was stolen code.

3. There is no way to determine if a post contains copyrighted material unless the post advertises itself as such, or by pure luck, the admin happens to be familiar with the original work. If I posted excerpts from a psychology book about Narcissistic Personality Disorder on Prokofy's forum while taking credit for the words, Prokofy would have no way of knowing short of comparing every post to the entire literary works of mankind.

The ONLY practical way an admin can remove this stuff from their site is by being notified by users.

4. "Safe Harbor" laws are also in play here, and it's not a good thing. Simply put, the law gives service providers a short grace period to remove copyrighted materials before legal action is taken. This is a good thing because service providers can't monitor all activity on their servers, so this beats getting a surprise court summons. But the result of this is that service providers will err on the safe said and quickly remove content and suspend accounts without due process.

People like Michael Crook have been using this technique extensively to bully critics by filing DCMA complaints against sites that feature his photo. The photo itself is actually the property of Fox News, who stated that the image may be freely used by anybody. However an ISP averse to the possibility of costly legal problems are not interested in getting their day in court. They simple suspend the site until the material is removed.

5. It feels to me that Apotheus Silverman wanted to be on the record as having technically notified Second Citizen of the copyright violation without ACTUALLY wanting to notify Second Citizen.

Generally speaking, SL is a small community, especially SL's creators which may number in the hundreds of people. We are all an instant message or a forum post away from each other. If Apotheus needed a kidney transplant from FIC, he wouldn't have silently fished around in old forums posts looking for an e-mail address that wasn't on the SC webpage. He would have contacted people and gotten ahold of FIC within hours.

Posted at 4:14PM on Nov 25th 2006 by Aimee Weber

14. In fact, I actually did have a problem once and needed Mother's help. Before that, it had never occured to me to look for admin information. But the moment I needed it, I opened up the forums and could clearly see in a matter of seconds where to find it. I contacted him and had the response I needed within a day.

"rat's nest that always has people in it like Aimee who threaten others with legal action over perceived slights and fake issues of "libel""

"this cesspool of anonymous griefers from v-5, multi-alti manipulators, copybotters and sloppybotters and outers of RL and harassers and stalkers"

Prokofy has a right to his opinions but I would like to reassure anyone who is taking the above words and other claims he has made against the Second Citizen forums seriously. Second Citizen is like any other forum. There are good people and bad people and believe me, the bad apples stand out, it's easy enough to discern them from the rest.

The only things that make Second Citizen different from, for example, the official SL Forums, is that your posts are not going to be deleted and you won't be banned for swearing at people or speaking your mind. Hell we even let Prokofy have his say. We'll argue with him, but no one deletes his posts or threatens to ban him.

Prokofy's definition of a griefer is rather loose, but even by his definition, Second Citizen is no more swarming with them than any other community.

Posted at 6:02PM on Nov 25th 2006 by Allana Dion

15. The contact email address to reach the owner of secondcitizen.com is in the registration information for the website and is available doing a standard whois lookup. The registration information is protected by DomainsByProxy for privacy purposes, but a contact email is provided that forwards to the owner's email. I tested it yesterday and the owner received the email with no problem. Apotheus chose to not use this email address, though he had to use the same registration information to find out who the ISP was. His rights to have the information removed are not in question. His behavior in pursuing the removal is the issue, and on this, he failed miserably to act in any kind of good faith.

Posted at 5:17PM on Nov 26th 2006 by Cristiano Midnight