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Sims Online Censors Online Journalist |
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As reported in Salon and Terra Nova, The Sims Online has started trying to shut down The Alphaville Herald, which publishes news and stories about events and trends inside The Sims Online. Although details are sketchy, it seems likely that Maxis was annoyed by the Herald's focus on the seamy underbelly of virtual life and its criticisms of Maxis.
Maxis started by going after Urizenus, the TSO avatar played by Peter Ludlow, who writes for the Herald. They cited him for a Terms of Service violation for linking to a "commercial" site (the Herald, natch) from his in-game profile and gave him 72 hours to shape up or ship out. He shaped up, by removing ads from the Herald. 11 hours later (and 11 < 72, note), his account was gone. Maxis, meanwhile, has started purging other in-game reference to the Herald.
Others may argue over the legalities of the situation, but I'd just like to say that it only reinforces my sense that among groups
running major online games, Maxis is the least competent. This sort of ham-handed intervention violates many of the basic good horse-sense rules of thumb for game designers: it looks bad, it makes people angry, and it causes more trouble than it solves.
On the one hand, Maxis is close to losing control over their game world. TSO is a positively Brechtian world of violence, flim-flammery, and low-down dirty tricks. (The Herald's major "sin" was opening a window onto such goings-on.) The Sims Shadow Government is an attempt to fill the power vacuum created by Maxis's inability to playbalance the world in a way that enables healthy self-regulation and local community.
But on the other hand, Maxis acts like a classic despot, using its powers to single out individual critics for the dungeons and the firing squads. The usual real-world justification for this kind of arbitrary action is the need for a strong central hand to protect public safety and common welfare. But since Maxis isn't all that good at those aspects, the Herald censorship smacks more of tyranny for its own sake.
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Re: Sims Online Censors Online Journalist (Score: 0) by Anonymous on Monday, December 15 @ 22:26:54 EST | Can this be real? Power vacuums and secret governments in a Video Game? |
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Re: Sims Online Censors Online Journalist (Score: 0) by Anonymous on Tuesday, December 16 @ 01:13:50 EST | Speaking of Brecht, why did Urizenus, who purports to be a sociologist of TSO and now a chronicler, begin his sojourn in TSO by opening up the Church of Mephistophles and building an altar for a Black Mass? This was done "to make the game more interesting" he once told me. Indeed. Perhaps his own behavior could give some insight into the behavior of others found offensive. Many players too countless to mention, including myself, have been censored and banned from this game. He has used his privilege and connections to get his story featured in the mainstream media. But journalists have to show a great deal more curiosity about his generally upbeat portrayal of the SSG. And they must also understand that the unfair and restrictive TOS Maxis has devised has actually allowed for this shadow world of cults and violence to flourish because no one can criticize it-- criticism of any kind is just not allowed, as it is instantly demeed "incitement of hate against another player" or "disparagement of Maxis/EA". Just like a workplace or a campus, a company that maintains essentially a paid membership private club online can set rules it likes. But we as citizens (still) of the free world must point out that these restrictions, running entirely contrary to the values of the First Amendment and a democratic civil society, are allowing totalitarian worlds to begin and flourish online, where they will ultimately become more deadly to us all. Dyerbrook dyerbrookME@juno.com |
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Re: Sims Online Censors Online Journalist (Score: 0) by Anonymous on Wednesday, December 17 @ 14:48:07 EST | I think this case is illustrative of the conflict between the community and the troll. If I host some kind of an electronic service, whether or not people pay to participate, I get to make the rules.
This principle works in the case of mailing lists, websites, chat rooms and online games. If you don't like it, go somewhere else.
A tyrannical government in meatspace is a moral problem. People can't easily escape it's grasp. Because of borders and passports and actual historic roots that people have to a place where their ancestors are buried, it is a moral wrong.
In the case of an online community, don't log on. It's really as simple as that.
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Re: Sims Online Censors Online Journalist (Score: 0) by Anonymous on Wednesday, December 17 @ 21:24:53 EST | As I've been told my previous post was too much inside baseball, let me note that the point of my remarks was to question the presentation -- that a "journalist" was involved (rather than a game player who had a website) and that he was "censored" (rather than that he was selectively terminated on a technical violation). Maxis/EA can hide behind the fact that the player Urizenus posted a URL to his site, which contained third-party cheat programs that are a violation of the TOS. I don't know the American cases on this, but IRL, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in a case involving the Sunday Times v. a journalist charged with improperly reporting on a crime, that he had the right to report on a crime independently, based on his own gathered information. In a case in Romania, even more relevant, a newspaper that printed a story and some ads referring to unlawful insider trading deals was closed, but even a Romanian judge without much First Amendment type context ruled that the paper had the right to report on a crime. So a good First Amendment type lawyer could argue that Urizenus, in putting links on his site to other sites that contained "crimes" or TOS violations, was merely reporting. After all, he didn't run flashing ads with graphics, but merely links. However, the context of his case suggests selective prosecution. *Of course* the standards of the RL law simply don't apply to a game. Why? Because the game is like a private club. You pay a membership fee of $9.95 a month, you must meet certain criteria (be over 13, have access to a credit card or parental permission)and you must sign a pledge to abide by the TOS. In that sense, the Alphaville Herald case is more like the Boy Scouts versus the gays in the mid-West of the U.S. If I'm not mistaken, the court ruled that the Boy Scouts had the right to bar gays from their "club". Of course, you could argue that far from being a private club, the Boy Scouts are a public service that should be open to everyone. Perhaps there is an argument to be made that TSO is a common carrier for communication, but that is probably stretching it.
I know from experience that when I put on my Sim profile a URL to my own site, which contained no ads for third-party cheats or any commercial items (there is a rule against commercial ads in the game), but merely a parody site filled with reporting on the SSG and other negative features of the game, Maxis/EA unilaterally removed the URL from my in-game profile and replaced it with spam about the TOS and something about sites that disparage the game or other players -- my recollection was that they used language not in the TOS but regrettably I didn't screen-shoot it in my shock. Others had the same experience, but the SSG itself, which routinely harassed players in the game in violation of the specific TOS prohibitions against it, did not have its URLs removed from its members' profiles.
Also at issue is Urizenus' efforts to report allegations of actual crimes IRL, namely child prostitution and child abuse. In the first case, there is ample evidence to support the allegation in this player's case, who has also been reported as a griefer and hacker, but apparently the company has not moved against him for unknown reasons, he is still in the game. On the second case, the case was weak because it involved hospitalization of a sibling said to be beat by a player, and there was a presumption that hospital authorities would have already made a report to child protective services. Maxis/EA could probably not be shown to be negligent in this case, if it was a true case, which we can't know, given the high incidence of Internet histrionics in the game.
What is infuriating to many about the Alphaville Herald story and the censorship on Sim Stratcs is that it is a classic case of this large company turning over enforcement of rules to very narrow-minded, inexperienced and unqualified people merely interested in creating cliques and cheer-leading sections for themselves and the insular worl
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