Rewrite: Blogdett's Model

Bridgett Blogdett article called And the Ringleaders Were Banned: An Examination of Protest in Virtual Worlds gives an examination of social movements and hactivism within virtual worlds. Hactivism is a social movement used by different groups on the internet to reach broader onlookers. Hactivists are a non-violent group of people who use legal and illegal tools through computers to reach their goal which is protesting an idea. Blogdett uses different ways to interpret these computer protests but, her main outline is her model of virtual collective action. The virtual collective action uses four primary aspects to look at virtual protests: Degree of visualization, legality, cultural homogeneity, and limitations of participation. Degree of visualization can be defined as the percentage of the amount of organization and participation that was achieved offline or virtually. Legality can be summed up as is a measurement of how legal the actions of the protests were both in planning a protest and holding it. Blogdett uses cultural homogeneity as a measure of how similar individuals with the protest are to each other in regards to cultural views and identity. Lastly is the limitation of participation that is a measure of if and how individuals are prevented from participating in the protest. (Week 7.2 virtual protest power point)

                An example of virtual protest is the making of a Facebook page called, Virtual Protest for Wisconsin, that is protesting for the recall of Scott Walker who is Wisconsin’s governor. This protest is in effective because the Wisconsin Republicans and Scott Walker stripped the middle class of their rights. The Facebook page was made by Public Campaign Action Fund that is a nonprofit organization that is trying to improve America’s finance laws. On the Virtual Protest for Wisconsin page there are numerous updates of protests going on outside of the virtual world that can help the cause for recalling of Scott Walker.

                In Blogdett’s virtual collective action model the Virtual Protest for Wisconsin page is legal in the real world government and in the virtual world. The making of a Facebook page is defended by the first amendment, Freedom of Speech, and in a virtual sense there is nothing wrong with spreading an opinion on websites. The amount of people that have liked the page is around 1,200 people that are the degree of visualization according to Blogdett’s model. The cultural homogeneity of the protest in Wisconsin is hard to determine since a lot of people have seen the page so to figure out similarities between views is hard to come by. I am assuming if people liked the Facebook page then they have the same view as the others, and that is to recall Scott Walker. The limitation of participation is a wide range of people. People who do not have the internet will not be able to see this page and even if people have the internet they have to have a Facebook profile which is not for sure.

SL GOR

John Fredrick Lange Jr. might be better known by his pen name, John Norman, who is the author of the well known Gor series that gives a backbone to the Gor subculture in Second Life. In- game zones where role playing according to the Gor philosophy, are some of the largest factions within SL. The books themselves can follow the primal instincts of man dominating over obstacles that stand in his way. As the Gor series became popular people took the books to the gaming world especially SL.

                Players who enter into a Gor role playing area are welcomed into the mind of John Norman. Norman’s basic outline of his Gor series was to instill an assumed hierarchy based on talent, mainly strength of man. As man conquers the obstacles of everyday life according to Norman woman are the helpers of the male race in there everyday race to triumph over all. Woman must do whatever the man needs and create this psychological god-like role for the man. Multiple depictions of men enslaving woman are found in the Gor series and propose a gender difference between men and woman.  The Gor books suggest to many readers that it is a natural way of life for a man to overrule a woman in every facet of life.

                After getting a basic summary of what John Norman’s philosophy was in the Gor series I reached out to Jessica Holyoke, an experienced writer and player within SL Gorean, to get fundamental knowledge of Gor’s on SL. To my surprise Gorean’s on SL cannot be put into one certain group according to Jessica Holyoke, “…its near impossible to define as Goreans on SL are comprised of at least four different sub-groups; those who engage due to a following of RL Gorean philosophy, those who engage as a more involved form of BDSM role play, those who engage in the role play as a form of historical/tribal recreation, and those who engage in the combat recreation.” All four of these sub- groups follow the novels written by John Norman in some type of fashion with the emphasis on gender roles. It is both to my amazement that these different sub cultures can co-exist and also to Jessica’s as she states, “Amazingly, all four groups can co-exist to some extent, even if sometimes there are tensions between the four types.”

Breaking News!

After posting a picture on my last blog of the extremes that gold farmers go through to make there daily pay I ended up getting a call a day later from a man named, Jose who had quite a story to tell. The picture I posted in my last blog showed a basement containing 3000 computers all linked to Ultima Online (UO) with different characters mining for iron in the fields. This seemed odd to me that one person could be controlling all of these characters at once in a single basement. Once I got on the phone with Jose and got past him yelling at me for using what he calls his “intellectual property” I soon understood that he had a bigger story to tell, of man gold farming for his life.

            He soon indulged me in his actions of which he makes around $35,000-a-week gold farming trying to make a living for his family. He started playing UO when he was in college casually dabbling with his main character, which was a Rouge mage, running around completing quests and very rarely getting into the economics of the game by power leveling other friends’ characters for some money in return. Once he graduated from college he quit playing on UO and ended up selling his own character to an eBay buyer. For a long time he was happy with his choice to stop playing but, one day a news report came out that the buyer who bought his character had committed several crimes. Taking multiple peoples lives because of in game problems which he had with other players.

            This lit a fire of motivation in Jose who felt it was his fault that this man was using his character that propelled him to commit such crimes. After getting this news Jose went out the next day to set the UO world straight and create a movement in the game by letting these players know that actions in the game should not carry over to the real world. He created a new character, which was a Wizard, named Zeus. As he travelled through the game trying to recruit people for the game he came upon characters known as bots, which were macroed to mine all day without the presence of humans on the other side of the computer screen. He soon became fascinated by what these bots were doing. So one day he researched what these bots were doing and started realizing there was a profit to be made in UO.

            From that point on Jose began his journey to change his life around and start making a profit off of playing this videogame. His mind state changed from just playing the game for fun, to making a business out of the game. He started out finding a macro program called “EasyUO” that allowed Jose to macro multiple characters that he made so that they could mine all day without him being there. He began making around 100,000 in game money a week which translated to him selling it on eBay for $35,000 real world money. His life was great until a month past and soon he went online and realized that all of his accounts had been banned. He began to panic as his source of money had gone out the window. He figured out that his characters had been questioned by the GM’s of the game and they came up with no answers so therefore, the GM’s had came to the conclusion these characters were being macroed without a person behind them to control them.

            Jose needed to find another way to get by these GM’s questions so he started researching again and found a program called A.L.I.C.E. The program A.L.I.C.E. was set up to carry on convincingly human conversation and eventually trick the human on the other side of the computer that there was a human talking to them. Soon after Jose got his 3000 bots up to speed with the installation of the A.L.I.C.E. program he was virtually unstoppable force creating a cashflow for himself that was astronomical.

            His downfall came when he started up a rogue team who he spilled out all of his secrets of his success. This team was built on the basis of five in game friends who he had come close with through his college raiding days. He expected everyone to jump on board but, soon realized he had a snitch in the group. The platform of UO soon realized what program he was using and started banning all of his characters. Jose just took this as a minor setback and set out to lay low for the next couple of days then start back up again. What Jose didn’t know the snitch in the group had joined forces with the GM’s of UO and he kept constant tabs on Jose’s next moves. Two years since Jose had last played he now lives in a dumpster outside of the UO offices trying everyday to get back on the platform. His legacy was known to all, as the first millionaire video gamer but now he can be known as the fastest fall from stardom to dumpsters.

Rewrite Second Life

                One of Cory Ondrejka main arguments is, “…creating a defensibly real, online world is not possible if its users are given the power to collaboratively create the content within it, if those users receive broad rights to their creations and if they are able to convert those creations into real-world capital and wealth (pg. 159).”  The problem behind being able to sell synthetic world property for real world dollars is the fact that if at a point jurisdiction has to step in what happens. There is a real economy in these synthetic worlds but, intermingling property and real world dollars can be a huge problem. 

                In Second life players have the ability to build anything that they can think of using the building tool. Once an item has been built the players can send it into the Linden lab servers to get full rights to that item and then can sell it for real world money. This correlates very well with Ondrejka’s argument that to create a defensibly real, online world will not be possible with the ability players have to sell property in Second life for real world money. Amidst, Ondrejka’s opinion there is some positives with the buying and selling of created objects in Second life: because of the collaborative nature of Second life users are socially always talking to each other therefore leading to a strong and diverse virtual community.

                In my own Second life experience getting past the lagging was my biggest problem but, eventually I gained some knowledge of how this game works despite my setbacks. I ended up creating a snow man using the building tools which are offered in Second life. I had the help of Alec Baca in order to make this snow man and coloring it as well. According to Ondrejka’s argument if I could convert my snow man into real world profit that online world is not possible. I feel this is true because if my virtual property gets sold for real world dollars then jurisdiction wants to be apart of this exchange. States want to be apart of these worlds because real world money is being used and they want to control it. Another one of Ondrejka’s points is that there is an economy present within virtual worlds and this is seen with Linden dollars and having the ability to purchase and sell land in the game. There are also these objects called, “Sex beds” which were built buy a player in the Second life world and he sent his property into the servers to get the rights for it. Once he got the rights for it now he makes people pay Linden dollars to him for the use of the beds which, in Ondrejka’s mind Second life cannot possibly create a defensibly real, online world because of this happening.

Virtual yet Real

One of Cory Ondrejka main arguments is, “…creating a defensibly real, online world is not possible if its users are given the power to collaboratively create the content within it, if those users receive broad rights to their creations and if they are able to convert those creations into real-world capital and wealth (pg. 159).”  The problem behind being able to sell synthetic world property for real world dollars is the fact that if at a point jurisdiction has to step in what happens. There is a real economy in these synthetic worlds but, intermingling property and real world dollars can be a huge problem.  

                In Second life players have the ability to build anything that they can think of using the building tool. Once an item has been built the players can send it into the Linden lab servers to get full rights to that item and then can sell it for real world money. This correlates very well with Ondrejka’s argument that to create a defensibly real, online world will not be possible with the ability players have to sell property in Second life for real world money. Amidst, Ondrejka’s opinion there is some positives with the buying and selling of created objects in Second life: because of the collaborative nature of Second life users are socially always talking to each other therefore leading to a strong and diverse virtual community.

                In my own Second life experience getting past the lagging and not being able to find a place to build anything I believe I have some knowledge of this game despite, my setbacks. In Second life’s game world there are advertisements up everywhere and this to me point directly to the real world. I felt as though being in the game was just an extension to the outside world the only difference being that I have the ability to fly.  One of Ondrejka’s points is that there is an economy present within virtual worlds and this is seen with Linden dollars and having the ability to buy and sell land in the game. There are also these objects called, “Sex beds” which were built buy a player in the Second life world and he sent his property into the servers to get the rights for it. Once he got the rights for it now he makes people pay Linden dollars to him for the use of the beds which, in Ondrejka’s mind Second life cannot possibley create a defensibly real, online world because of this happening.

Things We Dont Read: EULAs

                Jack M. Balkin writes the article in the, Virginia Law Review, called, “Virtual Liberty: Freedom to design and Freedom to Play in Virtual Worlds.” One of his main points he tries to get across to his readers is the fact that legal regulation of virtual worlds is inevitable. The reason behind his point is the fact that virtual worlds have items and that are bought and sold at real world value. Quoting Balkin he writes, “The single most important development that will lead to legal regulation of virtual spaces is the accelerating real-world commodification of virtual worlds” (pg. 2046)

                The Second-Life end user license agreement (EULA) is the biggest out of the three virtual world’s user license agreements that our class had to read. In Second-Life it is widely known that property is bought and sold in real life situations. This is one game that backs the reasons why Balkin believes that legal regulation is going to enter virtual worlds. It is interesting though in Second-Life’s EULA it says that Linden dollars cannot be sold or bought outside of the game. This is interesting because you can sell property but not money.

                Eve Online has a EULA that also specifies about its regulations on selling items and objects. The game does not permit the buying, selling, or auctioning on online websites outside of the Eve server. The law stopping the selling of items outside of the game on Eve contradicts Balkin’s opinion but, it is only because there is no known selling of items outside of the game. During the presentation of Eve’s EULA it was noted that there could be a black market outside of the game unknown to the average gamer that buys and sells items.

                Lastly, is Minecraft’s EULA which was the shortest EULA out of the three online games. Minecraft’s EULA seemingly only mentions in one sentence about the buying and selling of items in the real world by stating, “Remember not to distribute the changes.” With this short EULA and basically no regulations in the game there is undoubtedly the selling or buying of items or property outside of Minecraft.

              

Muddy Waters

                Greg Lastowka wrote,“The jurisdictional problems posed by cyberspace were recognized early in the history of Internet law. One radical question posed was this: if the Internet creates jurisdictional problems, why not use the Internet to solve these problems? The Internet could be its own jurisdiction, with its own laws, created by its own “consent of the governed” (pg. 80). The problem of jurisdiction on the internet is that no one has total control of what can and can’t be done on the internet. Since that is the case then how would a person be punished if caught doing something illegal on the web. The point of the internet is to be independent and have the ability to do whatever a person wants to.

                An article by Georg Krog, gives an example of two conflicts of internet jurisdiction. The first case was Bennett versus Hosting.com for improper venue. The case got dismissed by the U.S district court of northern California because, “…despite Bennett’s contention that it was unenforceable for unconscionability and inapplicable to her tort claims.” The second case was between Kruska versus Perverted Justice Foundation, Inc. (and other defendants) for filed defamation, cyberstalking, and other claims. The claims made by Perverted Justice Foundation, Inc, which they put on there website were that Mrs. Kruska was a child molester and pedophile. A U.S. District Court in Arizona dismissed the complaint against Perverted Justice Foundation based on a lack of personal jurisdiction.

Georg Krog's article

                Georg Krog’s article parallels well with the expanding uncertainty of the internets jurisdiction and how it should be dealt with. One of Greg Lastowka’s points he is trying to make in his book is that internet jurisdiction is still rough around the edges. In the second case featuring Kruska vs. Perverted Justice Foundation, how would you punish the website when it is spreading its information throughout the world? There is no territorial law that can be used because it is spreading its knowledge to millions of people everywhere who visit the site. Greg Lastowka makes the argument that the internet should have its own rules so that in the cases brought up by Krog do not happen because there is a clear distinction of law. In my opinion, with internet jurisdiction becoming more relevant something is going to have to happen. Right now, in today’s society internet is like muddy water, unclear and inconsistent. Greg Lastowka’s idea about the internet having its own laws makes the most sense because then they are set in stone and when problems arise we can handle them with the cyberspace rules instead of using the legal system that we have now.