In December 2006, while conducting an interview for CNET with Daniel Terdiman on her economic assets, the virtual studio in which the interview took place was bombarded by flying animated penises and copies of a photo of Graef modified to show her holding a giant penis in her arms. The griefers managed to disrupt the interview sufficiently that Chung was forced to move to another location and ultimately crashed the simulator entirely.[18] Video and images of the incident were posted to the "Second Life Safari" section of Something Awful, and the incident received international notice via blogs including Boing Boing and the online edition of the Sydney Morning Herald. Two weeks later, Anshe's husband, Guntram Graef, issued takedown notices under the DMCA, demanding that newspapers and websites remove photos and videos of the incident and claiming that they violated Graef's copyright in her avatar and other virtual creations. YouTube pulled the videos of the incident as a DMCA violation and banned the account of Second Life Safari, bringing objections from legal experts who considered the work "fair use".[19] A Linden Labs spokesperson suggested that the taking of videos and photos in Second Life should be governed by the same rules as in real life,[20] and an attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation compared it "to Armani attempting to restrict news photos of a car crash where one of the drivers was wearing an Armani suit."[21]
Jessica Ice on 26 Jan 09Anonymous communication is seen as the cornerstone of an Internet culture that promotes sharing and free speech and is overtly anti-establishment. Anonymity, so the argument goes, ensures governments cannot spy on citizens and thus guarantees privacy and free speech. The recommendations of the American Association for the Advancement of Science's conference on "Anonymous Communication Policies for the Internet" [1] support this view. Among the findings were that "online anonymous communication is morally neutral" and that "it should be considered a strong human and constitutional right." This view is fundamentally mistaken; by allowing anonymous communication we actually risk an incremental breakdown of the fabric of our society. The price of our freedoms is not, I believe, anonymity, but accountability. Unless individuals and, more importantly, governments can be held accountable, we lose all recourse to the law and hence risk our very freedom. The following sections argue this in more detail and suggest the only real solution is more openness, not less.
