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Sim Terrorism

An island was nuked in Second Life. Or the SL equivalent of a nuke. Devastation of the 3D island landscaping for the popular Australian company ABC came sometime overnight and took several hours to correct. ABC Island is reportedly the third most-visited place in world. The act of cyber-terrorism was possibly caught in the digital archives, so it will be interesting to see what transpires. There were hints of business rivals being involved, but those might be red herrings.

Tyler Who Should Be Blogging passed along this fresh-for-me bit of news: An island was nuked in Second Life.

Or the SL equivalent of a nuke.

Devastation of the 3D island landscaping for the popular Australian company ABC came sometime overnight the morning of May 22nd and took several hours to correct. ABC Island is reportedly the third most-visited place in world. The act of cyber-terrorism was possibly caught in the digital archives, so it will be interesting to see what transpires. There were hints of business rivals being involved, but those might be red herrings. There is a shot of the crater elsewhere.

ABC Island (restored)

Virtual “atom bombs” have been detonated by the Second Life Liberation Army against in-world stores (Reebok and American Apparel), purportedly as part of a campaign for more democracy in-world. They have a blog, but it is not surprisingly closed to the public. SLLA issued bounties for free-lance SL hitpeople last October.

In Only Tangentially Related News …
While I was visiting ABC’s Eco house, I got this alert from Machinima group”

World Action fund, dedicated to fighting global poverty, we are showing the film Every Minute. Every Minute is a minute long film challenging us to do more to make our planet a more ethical and balanced world. This movie will be showing all day today in advance of the Online Machinima Film Festival awards on Sat. May 26 12 SLT.

Some of you may be interested in that.

By Kevin Makice

A Ph.D student in informatics at Indiana University, Kevin is rich in spirit. He wrestles and reads with his kids, does a hilarious Christian Slater imitation and lights up his wife's days. He thinks deeply about many things, including but not limited to basketball, politics, microblogging, parenting, online communities, complex systems and design theory. He didn't, however, think up this profile.

6 replies on “Sim Terrorism”

And this is why I don’t play Second Life, WoW, Sims, or any of their ilk. Though I was addicted to PSO on the Dreamcast and Animal Xing on my DS for a bit.

Do people really care that much? Especially since Second Life can restore most of it?

Seven hours of down time in repair (longer than that, since someone had to wake up before discovering the problem) is a pretty noticeable statement. The loss of sim life and property may ultimately be nothing but any stores or interactions avatars might have had in that time won’t ever be regained.

Unless maybe ABC bombed their own island as a publicity stunt.

Second Life gets lumped into the game category of WoW too frequently. It would be a neat environment to develop games, and some certainly exist, but it is mostly about creation and community.

I’m still waiting for your alternate universe to show up in-world. Get someone on that.

I must say, not very evil of you. Put Evil Kirk on the line. He’ll build the alternate universe, even if it is only to put a crater in the middle of it.

in my mother’s (and now, all too frequently, my) voice:

You get outside right now young man! There will be no sitting in front of the computer on a beautiful day like today.

We only loaf on the computer during work hours.

This clarification appeared in The Australian on Tuesday:

The ABC has discovered that its bomb was a computer server error that it was able to fix within a couple of hours. Nonetheless, it is taking the likelihood of a terrorist attack seriously.

There wasn’t a lot of other positives about the reporting, apparently, but it is nice to know this turned out to be a glitch.

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