Hamlet’s credibility takes a plunge

I’m going to have to start a RedZone category at this rate!

Hamlet Au over at New World Notes wades into the mess of the RedZone furore and – well, rather makes a mess of things.

Trying to play down the situation, Hamlet engages in the very worst kind of journalism imaginable, including:

• Playing down the number of votes on the JIRA: “The JIRA thread has less than 1500 “votes” from Residents who consider the request valid and important…”
• Quoting Samuel Linden from a “related” JIRA: “We do not consider IP gathering to be an actionable security exploit”
• Overlooking the broader (and primary) issues around this tool – that of the potential for avatar / alt profiling, stalking, etc., while falling back on the hoary old “your IP Address is public” excuse: “Oh yeah, before you weigh in with your comments about Redzone’s IP address tracking software, keep in mind that if you post here, this Typepad blogging software lets me, well, track your IP address.”
• Attempts to make light of the whole situation as being meaningless with a quip about a Second Life band, “And while we’re at it, how much of a concern is this for Redzone, the popular Second Life industrial band of the same name but no apparent relation to the program?”

Quite what prompts this display of “journalistic” arrogance is beyond me.

In referencing the JIRA and dismissing it as having “only” 1500 votes, Hamlet deliberately overlooks the fact that for much of the past month the SL General Discussion forum has been awash with complaints and concerns around RedZone and its potential for abuse, thus demonstrating that there is far wider concern than those who use and understand the JIRA.

Furthermore, it may “only” be 1500 votes – but that still puts it right up there among the top-ranking JIRA, and this does account for something, even with LL abandoning voting themselves – or is Hamlet stating user thoughts on any matters within SL aren’t worth a thing?

Then there is the quote from Samuel Linden. While it is genuine, the JIRA itself is over twelve months old and as such, Hamlet’s use of Samuel’s comment is really playing a game of misdirection here; particularly when any such comment has been overtaken by the changes made to Section 4 of the Community Standards – changes that Hamlet, as a journalist prepared to actually investigate the matter he is opining on should be fully aware of.

But just in case it has somehow slipped his attention, let me provide a handy quote aide-mémoire for him:

“4. Disclosure

“Residents are entitled to a reasonable level of privacy with regard to their Second Life experience. Sharing personal information about your fellow Residents without their consent — including gender, religion, age, marital status, race, sexual preference, alternate account names, and real-world location beyond what is provided by them in their Resident profile — is not allowed. Remotely monitoring conversations in Second Life, posting conversation logs, or sharing conversation logs without the participants’ consent are all prohibited.”

IF this were just a matter of IP Address gathering, there wouldn’t be a problem; again, those objecting to RedZone have made this abundantly clear. But RedZone does far more than this, as well all know. It seeks to match avatar account information with IP Addresses in an attempt to link alts.

In other words, in case you still don’t get it Hamlet, RedZone harvests alternative account names and attempts to correlate them to real-world location via the IP Address – and this is most expressly not allowed.

Of course, Hamlet isn’t going to see an issue with RedZone because he’s too caught up in the world of Facebook, where Mark Zuckerberg and his idiotic notion that “the age of privacy is over” rule. Indeed, he is utterly dismissive of the idea that any of us have a right to privacy, “Right now, I’m inclined to think it’s a deep concern mainly to a vociferous minority who are vigilantly protective over their privacy. And, of course, Copybot and alt account users.” Nice.

And by the way, Hamlet, I saw exactly what you did there – linking those who wish to maintain a degree of privacy around their SL activities directly with the nefarious acts of “Copybot users”. Nice to see NWN stoop into the worst kind of tabloid trickery.

However, I’ll leave it to Ordinal Malaprop to make the most astute and accurate summation as to the value and accuracy of Hamlet’s piece:

“I really don’t think that anybody who can’t tell the difference between the implications of a website being able to record self-identified (i.e. basically an/pseudonymous) IPs if people choose to submit comments, and those of a system that collects IPs without awareness let alone consent which are automatically tied to a unique identifier, should be writing articles like this.”

Indeed.