Blizzard to remove the veil of anonymity
By
Adeon Hawkwood,
Posted on: 2010-07-06 10:48 in Comic and Hero-Villain Culture
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This reminds me of the TV Trope "Even evil has its standards". When gamers start effectively crying "Will someone think of the children!?", you know you've pushed a bit too far.
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Originally Posted by Nethergoat
Does altering the status quo to expose the identities of their forum participants make the "risk of someone hunting you down" more likely, or less likely?
The bigger the number you're dealing with the larger the ramifications of "vanishingly low" probabilities are. WOW has a playerbase larger than the population of some countries. |
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Point of fact, they have not been 100% set-in-stone that just because it's in a EULA that it is enforcilble. It really depends upon the venue where the case is tried, and even those are not on the entirety of the EULA.|
Originally Posted by Venture
Utter codswallop. EULAs have been held up in court. Blizzard has sued under its EULAs and won.
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The Blizzard case was not on the entirety of the EULA, but under the provision regarding reverse-engineering and the DMCA.
I am not so sure about this idea. Part of me sees it as an invasion of privacy (though, you did give them your name so...), but...
there is nothing to be ashamed of playing WoW (even though, personally i think the game isn't very good). There is nothing to be ashamed of of playing CoX, or any game.
If someone won't hire you or date you because you play games, then... their loss. They'll find that alot of others do too, so their choices will become narrowed.
If you are worried about people who you talk to tracking you down and killing you... then why the heck are you in an environment with those people in the first place. You wouldn't be in real life.
Maybe its better if everyone just knows you for the entirety of your personality. If they don't like one aspect of that, then whats the use bothering with them?
Maybe Freedom of speech demands responsibility of speech (You are free to say anything you like, as long as you know people will know you said it)
Though, that may well be in the "Wouldn't it be nice if everyone was nice" territory.
*shrugs*
Always remember, we were Heroes.
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Venture, what about my other point re: possible future employers? I know it's been a long standing HR practice for the last 4 years to include a google search of new applicants along with the usual criminal background check/possible credit score check. There's even employees who were already hired and worked for months fired over shenanigans with their facebook accounts, because it's all tied to their name. Obviously if I were going through the application process, I probably wouldn't want the posts I made in the heat of the moment during issues 2-7 to be used against me, nor would I expect a potential manager/head of HR to get a particular sense of humor/posting voice that's taken me 6 years to accrue here.
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Originally Posted by Venture
Utter codswallop. EULAs have been held up in court. Blizzard has sued under its EULAs and won.
As for the rest: if we were to do away with everything that could possibly cause someone somewhere to be harmed, through accident or malice, we would have to start with fire and the wheel. The bottom line is that the risk of someone hunting you down because of something you did on the internet is vanishingly low. |
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... reminds me of when I got hired by a company a while back. First day of work they talked to me about the way I carried myself on the City of Heroes forums. As in, my attitude and what topics I discussed... |
Originally Posted by Friggin_Taser
Venture, what about my other point re: possible future employers? I know it's been a long standing HR practice for the last 4 years to include a google search of new applicants along with the usual criminal background check/possible credit score check. There's even employees who were already hired and worked for months fired over shenanigans with their facebook accounts, because it's all tied to their name. Obviously if I were going through the application process, I probably wouldn't want the posts I made in the heat of the moment during issues 2-7 to be used against me, nor would I expect a potential manager/head of HR to get a particular sense of humor/posting voice that's taken me 6 years to accrue here.
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The concept of the internet implying privacy was a brief love affair from which the world awoke the next morning and promised to call, hastily scribbling its number on a napkin covered in Tabasco and saliva.
I actually got an email from my supervisor a few years back telling me that I personally caused her to report cityofheroes.com and the boards to IT to have them blocked for all employees of the company.
'Twas a fun email, since, for some reason, they didn't block cityofvillains.com.
Current Badge Hunter: Plot Device (Rad/Thermal/Dark) - 1,268 Xbox Live: Friggin Taser
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As long as this policy is in place, I think I'll pass on everything Blizzard. |
Originally Posted by Marcian Tobay
This is a terrible, awful, invasive idea. I hope that there is a huge enough backlash that they apologize.
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I hope they come to their senses.
Oh, yeah, anyone remember this?
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I'd guess "pay". I, for one, am boycotting Activision, but picked up Prototype a few days ago. Used.|
Originally Posted by Gaderath
There is some interesting wording... Pay... or play?
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In the current economic climate, there's little chance of such consequences for employers. Playing MMOs has retained its stigma (as KaliMagdalene points out) even as WoW has carried the genre into mainstream pop culture.|
Originally Posted by Dr_Darkspeed
If someone won't hire you or date you because you play games, then... their loss. They'll find that alot of others do too, so their choices will become narrowed.
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| Maybe Freedom of speech demands responsibility of speech |
While I'm not suggesting that the nerfing of pallies is on the same level as fighting government corruption or fomenting revolution against tyranny, but anonymous free speech on the Internet is recognized by US courts.
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Yes, but it shouldn't! And aren't there a few news stories recently about successes from people who MMO players, and the fact that Computer game lauches outgross Movie ones. Maybe, if people realised that alot of their top applicants played MMOs, they wouldn't be a stigma, and maybe even a positive point? Valuing Guild leadership or economic dominence or community relations... |
Originally Posted by TrueGentleman
In the current economic climate, there's little chance of such consequences for employers. Playing MMOs has retained its stigma (as KaliMagdalene points out) even as WoW has carried the genre into mainstream pop culture.
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| While I'm not suggesting that the nerfing of pallies is on the same level as fighting government corruption or fomenting revolution against tyranny, but anonymous free speech on the Internet is recognized by US courts. |
I was just thinking on the more idealised level. Ideally, you shouldn't have any need of privacy whilst saying something, because you would be protected from anyone holding that against you unjustly (again, utopianly, by the fact that noone would)
Though, it maybe part of my point of view from having been raised in the UK, where free speach means speakers corner (i.e. you get up and say whatever you want to say, and noone can hurt you for it, because... well, the laws say they can't). We don;t have free speech gaurenteed to us, but... i don't know anyone who has ever stopped me, or anyone I know saying whatever we like. but, thats just a whole different discussion.
Always remember, we were Heroes.
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kindly point me to a single mmo company that has been able to shut down gold farmers, despite them universally acknowledging them being in violation of eula, legally. the eula is a policy with the customers, they cant supersede the law of their countries, or else the nonsense we had with the gold spammers would never have happened. a customer could sue a company over an eula violation on their part because it would be a violation of contract, but companies that operate outside of the eula cannot have any legal action taken against them, outside of in game consequences. The post i was responding to was about enforcing this new privacy policy in countries with stronger guarentees of privacy, and wether it would affect their ability to operate in those countries, post me a relevant link if you have one, otherwise you are not addressing the point i made.|
Originally Posted by Venture
Utter codswallop. EULAs have been held up in court. Blizzard has sued under its EULAs and won.
As for the rest: if we were to do away with everything that could possibly cause someone somewhere to be harmed, through accident or malice, we would have to start with fire and the wheel. The bottom line is that the risk of someone hunting you down because of something you did on the internet is vanishingly low. |
as for the rest, bottom line is that putting up personal information online can be harmful, and by doing this they are willfully exposing their customers to additional risk. Their heart may be in the right place, but they are showing a complete lack of knowledge of technology. i have yet to see someone using the inherent capacities of fire to eb able to find my address , place of work and phone number and use them to harass me, i suspect the wheel similarly lacks those features, reasonable people understand the difference between the risks of different applications of technology and plan accordingly to mitigate those risks.
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What about safety? I've been internet stalked before. I know other women who have been. There was a post on the Borderhouse by a woman talking about how a guild member actually tracked her down to her dorm to confront her because his sexist comments to her got him banned from raids.|
Originally Posted by Friggin_Taser
Obviously we had/have different ways to go about calling said spade a spade, but I have to tend to agree. Back when I was in the height of my forum trollish ways before my none-too-requested forum vacation, I didn't get any kind of push back with my real name being out there on websites I linked to from my profile or anything like that.
But, this begs the question: would I want my forum posts from that time or even now, when I've become a lot more calm and posting more for fun than for fighting, to come up in a google search of my name? Would an employer who is googling a name and finds hundreds of WoW forum posts think less of that person since s/he seems to spend all his time on a video game? It opens up a lot of moral questions. |
And yes, as I linked, there are employers who do not want to hire WoW players.
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shouldn't or not, they do, its reality, and the reality in which blizz makes this decision, and that is why it is very very bad. HR does a lot worse in their ideas, but this is a serious risk that someone could be written off because management fad of the week says that "gamers dont make good executives" and your career gets torpedoed. there was one story about a executive honing leadership skills through wow, but there really is nothing on the broad scale that would indicate that running a guild is any more of a preparation for working with people than volunteering in a leadership capacity with a charity, mentoring a sports team, or any other real world leadership exercise. It was a fluff piece with a buzzword, nothing more. same reason that executives were reading the "book of five rings" for a while, it had a little buzz that it may affect executive performance strategy, those fads come and go.|
Originally Posted by Dr_Darkspeed
Yes, but it shouldn't! And aren't there a few news stories recently about successes from people who MMO players, and the fact that Computer game lauches outgross Movie ones. Maybe, if people realised that alot of their top applicants played MMOs, they wouldn't be a stigma, and maybe even a positive point? Valuing Guild leadership or economic dominence or community relations...
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EDIT: woo, kali backs me up on the gamer discrimination point.
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the battle cry of the Utopian....
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Originally Posted by Dr_Darkspeed
Yes, but it shouldn't!
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Yeah, i know |
Originally Posted by Nethergoat
the battle cry of the Utopian....
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Dumb reality
Always remember, we were Heroes.
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That's because the worst of the crop have been filtered out. There were some pretty terrible trolls around here in 2004-2005.
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Originally Posted by Marcian Tobay
Absolutely. When people complain about trolls in City of Heroes, I tell them "You do realize that a troll in City of Heroes is someone who uses the small spoon to eat soup, right? That we faint from the indignity of it?"
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Well now, there's a lesson here about not using your real name when you make up these accounts in the first place.
Also: If by some freakish chance someone gets stalked, or gods forbid something worse, that might lead to some litigation. Maybe that will get the EFF and ACLU involved. Maybe that'll get appealed all the way to the Federal Supreme Court. Maybe it'll cause such a huge debacle that they'll just decide to shut down all the forums to all their games permanently.
Then maybe Usenet will get popular again, especially the alt groups, where it was always easy to be anonymous!
Yeah.
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Do you know what a slippery slope fallacy is?
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Originally Posted by Venture
Utter codswallop. EULAs have been held up in court. Blizzard has sued under its EULAs and won.
As for the rest: if we were to do away with everything that could possibly cause someone somewhere to be harmed, through accident or malice, we would have to start with fire and the wheel. The bottom line is that the risk of someone hunting you down because of something you did on the internet is vanishingly low. |
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The good news is that you do! Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which the UK was a signatory, states: "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." (Incidentally, Article 12 states: "No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation.") Moreover, I'd argue that this isn't such a different discussion. Blizzard has already found itself in the position of being asked to reveal private information about its subscribers before.
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Originally Posted by Dr_Darkspeed
We don;t have free speech gaurenteed to us, but... i don't know anyone who has ever stopped me, or anyone I know saying whatever we like. but, thats just a whole different discussion.
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Ew. WoW forums are srs bsns, huh?
Yeah, bad idea. Cyberstalking and all that.
Me, I just -hate- my RL name, and will be switching to a stage name as soon as certain things finally take off. That's why I hate Facebook. None of my friends call me by my real name, if they even know what it is.
Hell, I'd rather be called "Aggie" over my real name. >.<
Tales of Judgment. Also here, instead of that other place.
good luck D.B.B.
I don't like this, but I can't help but also feel this is the World of Warcraft community bringing this on themselves.
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Uh, no, the WoW community is not responsible for Blizzard's boneheaded, customer-hostile decisions.
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Originally Posted by RaiderRich2001
I don't like this, but I can't help but also feel this is the World of Warcraft community bringing this on themselves.
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The responsibility to enforce community rules lies with Blizzard, not their paying customers.|
Originally Posted by RaiderRich2001
I don't like this, but I can't help but also feel this is the World of Warcraft community bringing this on themselves.
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I'm wondering how they think they can leverage this to make money.
Because their stated reasons are ridiculous.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
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They're extremely active. People use them for theorycrafting, casual conversation, they have a community there like we do here, just more active. |
Originally Posted by Agonus
Ew. WoW forums are srs bsns, huh?
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Yeah, bad idea. Cyberstalking and all that. Me, I just -hate- my RL name, and will be switching to a stage name as soon as certain things finally take off. That's why I hate Facebook. None of my friends call me by my real name, if they even know what it is. Hell, I'd rather be called "Aggie" over my real name. >.< |
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As for the rest: if we were to do away with everything that could possibly cause someone somewhere to be harmed, through accident or malice, we would have to start with fire and the wheel. The bottom line is that the risk of someone hunting you down because of something you did on the internet is vanishingly low.
The bigger the number you're dealing with the larger the ramifications of "vanishingly low" probabilities are.
WOW has a playerbase larger than the population of some countries.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone