I’ll explain the bizarre image—but first the main part of this post.
Over the past several years I’ve hammered John Edwards again and again for his refusal to speak out against anti-school, anti-library copyright legislation like the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act. That’s not out of hatred of this major Democratic Presidential candidate—in fact, just the opposite. I expect more out of him and his campaign adviser Number One, his wife Elizabeth, given their laudable positions on many other issues. If John Edwards won’t fight Bono, then who among the major candidates will?
A true Net-lover
This weekend I’ll be reviewing Elizabeth Edwards’ book, Saving Graces, from Internet and copyright perspectives. I’m convinced that Mrs. Edwards is into the Net for more than just campaign purposes—which makes it all the more unfortunate that her husband is wooing Net activists without addressing the very real threat of eternal copyright or at least the trend toward bloated terms.
Either possibility would be poison for efforts such as Project Gutenberg, which, ironically, runs out of the University of North Carolina, where both Edwards attended law school.
Stiff penalties, please
Meanwhile my sympathies go out to the Edwards campaign over vandalism that dirty tricksters committed against the campaign’s area on Second Life. Photo shows disrupted site. The fact that scum would even care about Edwards’ SL outpost says something about the increasing visibility of VR.
I hope that Linden Labs catches the villains and that penalties are stiff. An Edwards blog reports: “They plastered the area with Marxist/Leninist posters and slogans, a feces spewing obscenity, and a photoshopped picture of John in black face, all the while harassing visitors with right-wing nonsense and obscenity-laden abuse of Democrats in general and John in particular.”
The defacement of Edwards’ “Second Life” HQ was probably conducted by griefers that are not associated with Republicans, Democrats or any conventional political party. The “Bush 08” tags worn by some of the griefers were probably intended as a form of absurdist humor since Bush can not run in 2008 due to the term limitation defined by Constitutional amendment. An article in a blog at Wired discusses the electronic vandalism and says “This is the modern-day equivalent of hippies freaking out the squares.”
The comment section at Wired contains a note by someone that might be a member of the group responsible for the defacement:
PN are the initials of a griefer group. Of course there is no proof that this comment is accurate but within the image depicting the defacement there is a sign with the word “Pool” visible and partially clipped. The phrase “Pool’s Closed” refers to a previous incident of griefing conducted by the group PN.
The comment section also contains a harsh remark aimed at the group that the commenter thinks is responsible:
A reporter at the Valleywag blog has been visiting “Second Life” recently. When he visited the Edwards headquarters he apparently found another group of griefers. There was “small crowd hanging around.”
The TeleRead blog had an article about an earlier instance of griefing in “Second Life” involving the avatar “Anshe Chung”. The article “Second life, same mess” describes other clashes and incidents of protest in “Second Life”.
You’ve made a pretty good case, Garson—thanks for such an informative commnet. Of course, the term “dirty tricksters” would still apply; we’re simply talking about a different species of them. – David