Following the recent change to the Community Standards, zFire Xue has been attempting to wriggle out of having to receive the formal consent of those being scanned by his RedZone devices to have their information “background checked”.
Tateru Nino carried the concerns of users about Xue’s unethical approaches to the situation, which included a threat the release his database to all and sundry (for a fee), and his attempts to equate implied consent with formal (or informed) consent; not to mention his willingness to effectively throw his users under the wheels of ToS violations.
The Lab were very clear on matters, as you can see here.
The change to the Community Services itself wasn’t enough. However, this move by Linden Lab – coupled with the fact that once again, the RedZone tool has been delisted from SL Marketplace and comments from Lab representatives thanking users for filing AR’s on the matter of the number false positive reports this tool gives (in matching avatar accounts to one another) is indicative that the wheels are still in motion on this matter.
Interestingly, at around the time the comments were made, RedZone again vanished from the SL Marketplace.
Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld 
((OOC)) A bit Off Topic here Inara, but…..
Have you tried the New Blog Platform yet? It sucks harder than a brand new Dyson. For one thing it doesn’t diplay properly in IE (quel surprise), but the links and search don’t seem to work. I hope it is just me, ‘cos if it isn’t…..
WRT Red Zone, this web-based data scraping is way out of control now, I honestly do not see what LL can do to stop it if the Viewers don’t. Ethics went out of the window several years ago in all manner of things, this is just one more instance.
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I’ve commented on the new Platform in a post, so will say no more here :).
RedZone is a can of worms. The Viewer media patch is rolling out, and is being submitted into the Snowstorm project for possible inclusion in Viewer 2. LL are moving on matters, as has been witnessed in the JIRA and in comments noted by Tateru Nino and re-reported here and in other blogs.
In fairness, the problem is complex from LL’s perspective, and those of us who are seeking to minimise people’s exposure to unwarranted tools like RedZone are actually somewhat sympathetic to their position – although granted, the media exploit has been known about for years and was actually somewhat opened out further with Viewer 2.
If you’ve not already done so, I really would urge you to go WATCH (given voting is going away, and this is now the yardstick by which LL measure JIRAs) the following JIRAs – you may get additional e-mail as a result, but you can filter that, and the JIRAs themselves are very important to everyone’s privacy:
SVC-6793 – Establish a do not track opt out system
SVC-6801 – Parcel Ban -> Parcel Mute
VWR-24746 – RedZone Security violates TOS, exposes private information and is being misused
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I read your latest post on Soft Linden’s action – yet another instance of LL being more pro-active (if slow) inworld. It is encouraging.
WRT The new Community Platform, I repeat what I said in my blog and on here. It is broken and it sucks mightily.
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Soft deserves praise. At a time when other Linden (Oz) were simply trying to shut down the JIRA that raised the flag – Soft got himself involved.
As to the CP – SL Universe is more fun and more informative.
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