This was an attempt to do 1 of 2 things or both. There is no denying it because every other "excuse" I've seen is pure bull and doesn't even make sense. The person responsible for doing this was either arrogant enough to think that the userbase was large enough and there was enough people logging in that putting links to a site could cause it issues or they figured the extra traffic could financially harm the person paying for the service or both. This crap about boasting traffic I really don't get. I don't see why anyone would accept something that doesn't even make sense. How are you boasting traffic by hiding any knowledge of what your doing to boast? How is any person that matters going to notice a bunch of hidden iframes on the login page? Where they boasting to the owner of the website? There are much more legal ways of "boasting" your traffic. They did post traffic stats which is what I see as boasting but hiding iframes isn't even in the same ballpark as boasting. It was a pissing match between 2 or more devs on different projects and they used their userbase in illegal activity. People saying it was "hardly" a DDos are trying to discredit what it was. When it comes to laws there really isn't no "kind of" breaking the law. Just because someones arrogance prevents them from doing something successfully doesn't make the attempt any less illegal. If you steel something from a store and get caught before you leave the store you still get in trouble. Also discrediting the victim was not a bright idea either because frankly it doesn't matter not one bit who the victim was or what they are guilty of. The old saying stands here 2 wrongs don't make a right. Linden must act according to this. They should not be biased in any manor.
The facts are emerald violated the trust of their users and they have done so a few times and do nothing to correct the problem. They violated the TPV policy a few times also that should at least warrant removal from the TPV list AT LEAST. I wouldn't recommend banning the client because a lot of people use it but removing them from the TPV list will definitely send a message and maybe MAYBE they will try to fix the structure of the project so that someone can be held responsible for changes to important parts of the viewer. Also I would think that the emdku crap they are putting in the viewer violates the TPV simply because no body can see what gets added because of it. They could be transmitting every bit of our information somewhere and no body knows. I wouldn't put it past some of the devs after what I've seen and the secrecy that is growing from within. I want everyone to know that I am not an emerald hater. I love emerald and I still use it occasionally but I only use a copy I have compiled myself. I do not trust dev's of an opensource project who have something they want to hide from everyone specially ones with the backgrounds of certain dev's on the emerald team. I would also like to say that had this been a "first offence" it might be different and the "we didnt know" excuse might have flown but considering there are a few dev's that have had repeated headlines that make them out to be liars and script kiddies with known "not so legal" retaliation habits a bit more drastic measures should be taken. its like disciplining your child. if you threaten and threaten but never act eventually they learn they can do whatever they want and not get in trouble. the TPV means nothing if its not enforced. _______________________________________________ Policies and (un)subscribe information available here: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/OpenSource-Dev Please read the policies before posting to keep unmoderated posting privileges
