ZFire should apologise to his users

A content creator whom I’ve know for quite a while inworld contacted me last night to berate me for being anti Redzone, said content creator has suffered badly at the hands of copybot over the years and felt that Redzone was the best solution on the market. This content creator is convinced that the anti Redzone rising has been instigated by copybotters who have been thwarted by Redzone, even when I pointed out Redzone’s own miserable statistics for dealing with copybot, they wouldn’t have it, the propaganda war on both sides has taken hold and for many there is no middle ground here.

Some Redzone supporters refuse to see the alt exposure as a problem and feel it’s silly, Some Redzone opponents refuse to acknowledge that IP bans have worked and that griefers coming back with throwaway alts have been thwarted by Redzone.

This of course was always going to happen, in my view Redzone remains unethical because it does not seek consent and uses an exploit to harvest data. There is no need for Redzone to harvest data on people who have done no wrong, if it’s a security tool, but the lure of the nosey parkers seems to have been too much for ZFire to resist.

Redzone could have quietly gone about its business, linking people, incorrectly at times, via IP addresses and such like, if Redzone hadn’t exposed alts of people who had not been banned from parcels but had merely visited them, then this controversy would not have exploded in the fashion it has, in terms of security, there’s absolutely no need to have collected data on folk going innocently around Second Life.

Redzone could have scanned someone, seen if they matched the algorithm of a banned avatar for said parcel, and refused that avatar access, if they didn’t match, no details should have been recorded and had they done that, none of this controversy would have happened in this way, but ZFire didn’t want to play that game and that leaves the stench of snooping being a much greater appeal of this tool than security.

Over at The Alphaville Herald there’s an interview with ZFire where he once again squirms away from the alt exposure issue, undeed the only stalking issue he seems to think exists is that of Redzone users who banned avatars and their alts, he steadfastly refuses to acknowledge that Redzone was a stalker’s wet dream and a nosey parker’s delight.

Throughout this episode, ZFire has been his own worst enemy, posting in his own blog how he could take the system private and sell the alt database via Paypal, even on the Herald article he acknowledges that this would make the tool nothing more than an alt detector, nothing to do with security.

Content creators angry about this because they feel they’ve lost a security tool, look at the whole picture here, because the people who object to being secretly scanned are your customers and whereas you may pay tier to Linden Lab, it’s because of these very customers that you’re able to do so, look at ZFire’s words and deeds and his refusal to properly play ball over alt disclosure, something that was not needed if this device were primarily about security.

ZFire should be apologising to the people whom used the device solely as a security measure, he shouldn’t be trying to wriggle around the issue, he should be promising to make a compliant device and at the same time Redzone users should be creating Jira’s with suggestions on better inworld security tools, because Redzone’s bad ethics put it squarely in the two wrongs don’t make a right category.