Darryl Woodford

So, there has been so very much written the last few days about Blzzard’s RealID policy, but it seems just about everybody agrees that anonymity is the expected default online, and that Blizzard have gone way too far with whatever their intentions (perhaps good) were with this system. Thought provokingly for me, Metaverse Journal even pointed out that Anonymity is the default offline:

We don’t normally think of anonymity as the default state, but it is. There’s 6.25 or so billion people on the planet. There are numerous occasions that we hand over our identification or give our names for one reason or another, but we generally do so only to people that we trust to handle them properly or that simply don’t really care who we are.

Do you know your barista’s full name? Do they know yours? Would you have any idea what their first name was if they didn’t wear a name tag?

We routinely caution our children not to give out their full names to strangers, or indeed to anyone that they don’t have a very good reason to trust (eg: a policeman).

If you ask the person serving you at the grocery checkout or your bank teller what their last name is, they’ll probably be reluctant to tell you. For many establishments it is against policy to reveal that information.

Large and heavily trafficked call-centres and customer-support services routinely assign pseudonyms to their staff to avoid issues of harassment. In smaller outfits, it’s rarer, but still sometimes done if a staff member has a particularly memorable, distinctive or unique first name – or if another front-line staffer has the same first name.

Why do we go through all of this?

Because we know it’s safer!

via Metaverse Journal | True Names: identity, safety and Blizzard’s Real ID

So the question switches to what is the solution, and the below from Randy Farmer basically summarises what I would argue for:

An Alternative Everyone Can Live With

There was/is an alternative – described in the Tripartite Identity Model post from two years ago: Implement Nicknames!

Sure, have a top-level social identity, but present it as user-controlled Nickname and allow users to share a variant of their real name – but don’t require it! Sure, if the Nickname is the same as their RealID, feel free to show an indicator, like Amazon.com does with their Real Name markers. Allow users to reveal what they wish – even provide incentives for them to do so, but don’t bind full disclosure on them. Even Facebook doesn’t do this!

It’s never too late.

P.S.: I can’t stop being amazed – Asking for help on a forum requires disclosing your real name to God, Google, and Everyone? Come on! You’ve got to be kidding!

via Habitat Chronicles: RealID and WoW Forums: Classic Identity Design Mistake.

Blizzard have responded, telling Gamasutra that “we’re listening”, but continuing to insist that the system is opt-in, because players are not forced to post on the forums and ‘their gameplay experiences will not change if they choose not to use the Real ID communication features in game’. Seriously? In the same discussion they also indicate that they will attempt to crack down on players using false identities, stating ‘our Terms of Use agreement requires that players provide us with accurate information’.

Meanwhile, players are exploring how they can use the parental control features to limit or prevent data being shared in-game using Real ID, and others are continuing to explore and expose the personal lives of Blizzard executives and staff, though to my mind some are going too far:. Here’s two (slightly out of context) quotes from the linked page, along with the disclaimer, scrubbed of personal details… to me that’s going too far.

NONE OF THESE POSTS ARE THREATS. I’ve seen people at 4chan and other places saying this site is filled with thinly veiled threats. It’s not. I do not wish to see any harm or harassment come to ANYONE listed here, even Bobby.

But hey, he’s a busy man. He’s got a wife and three young daughters, ages x, y, and z. The oldest is [xxx], she likes skiing. There are pictures of her that can be found, but I’m not posting them because I think I’ve made my point there. Anyone messing with his family or kids is a sick fuck, but you know what? There are a lot of sick fucks who play WoW

The beautiful family’s current address is either xxxx or yyyy ******** Way. They own or owned both but surely they don’t need two houses, do they? ******* Way, Beverly Hills, California 90210. They spent $171,708 for renovations a few years ago, nice place!

via What’s in a name?

But in general the point is well made around the net, you can find plenty of information about almost anyone with free tools these days, as I have shown friends in the past when pointing out their facebook profiles were open for the world to see, and just about anyone can be impersonated. Just a couple of weeks ago I came across this on twitter, using all my personal information (that is on twitter) for (I assume) spamming purposes:

Twitter have now removed the account, but it’s an example of how easily privacy breaches can occur, your identity can get stolen, and why it’s worth monitoring the google results for your name!

A somewhat ironically timed quote below from Ian Bogost, which I came across after watching the Uruguay/Ghana game last night. Opinion amongst people I’ve spoken to / read since last night has varied, from calling for Suarez to be banned for 10 games to saying what he did is what you’d expect any professional to do in the circumstances.

What caught my attention was the similarity in many ways with the Ferrari / Hamilton situation from last weekend. To recap, Hamilton illegally passed the safety car, whilst the Ferraris lined up behind it. By the time the stewards issued their penalty (a drive-through for Hamilton), he had pulled so far ahead of the Ferraris that he was able to maintain his lead over them and finish on the podium, where as Alonso languished in 8th.

The Ferrari argument, which the FIA reject, is that Hamilton effectively gained an advantage by breaking the rules, and that he should have been further punished so his advantage was lost. In the Suarez case, he stopped a definite goal, giving Uruguay a chance to stay alive which they did when Ghana missed the penalty, Suarez today called it the new “Hand of God”, showing no regret at all.

What is fair in such cases will be a topic that is sure to be of future debate, but for any one event all you can do is enforce the rules, and both the FIA and the referee last night did that. As for the quote from Bogost, well, suffice to say I don’t really agree with his analogy.

Perhaps this is one reason why Americans dislike soccer so much: we are obsessed with fairness and transcendental truth, while football shows us that the universe is cruel not (just) through God’s will, but because so many factors come into play all at once that it’s impossible to account for them all. Perhaps this explanation also meshes well with football’s popularity in the developing world. In some situations, you can do everything right, and you still can get screwed.

via Ian Bogost – There are no Blown Calls in Football.

I’m writing this at 22:30, having been awake barely 5 hours, and getting ready to head to the Pig & Whistle with some friends (Brit, Aussie and American) for the England vs USA game, which kicks off at 0430 local. Unfortunately, because of Aussie laws, we actually need to be at the pub before 3 (we’re aiming for about 0230), because they then have to lock the doors, despite the fact they can serve alcohol ’til 5 (and you have until 0520 to drink up). It’s likely to be a month of screwed up sleep, though France & Uruguay managed to put me to sleep pretty effectively last night As I write this, Korea have gone up 2-0 against Greece, so I guess those in Cyprus won’t be in such a good mood as they were during Euro 2004

Life in Brisbane is great, and my thesis continues to plod along at a steady pace; I have now submitted the Stage 2 and (touch wood) it seems to be proceeding through the administrative processes without problem. I have shifted focus a bit from Star Trek Online (which frankly doesn’t seem to be an interesting example of much — it’s a single player game with a bit of multiplayer functionality, and none of the interest that is attached to other environments for now) to Eve Online, which despite being around a fair while has yet to attract much academic focus, yet has it’s own policy committee and a relatively open discussion with players who shape the game far more than is possible with STO. I continue to look at Second Life & Project Entropia, and on the fringes am looking at some games like NationStates and A Tale in the Desert, which provide some interesting examples of in-game regulation. I have installed on this blog a digress.it mini-blog which will contain chunks of my thesis as I go, and I welcome constructive feedback on that as things progress.

It doesn’t look like I’m going to make it back to the UK (or Cyprus / Europe in general) this year, though family are coming out next Easter which will be nice, and I learnt today that friends of the family will also be out next Easter as their daughter is doing a year at Griffith on the Gold Coast, so will be nice to catch up with them who I haven’t spoken to in maybe 5+ years now. I’m planning to make a trip back to Europe next winter (Nov/Dec 2011), where I intend to visit Iceland/CCP, and have even got a good friend lined up to help out, which is something of a relief, and will be a great help. I also intend to speak to regulatory bodies in the gambling industry, however the details of that are still TBC. Not quite sure what else I’ll fit into that Europe trip or possibly a separate one over Christmas, but may stop by the UK, Cyprus and possibly Denmark for varying time periods — a lot depends on money/timings, and what terms are applied to any additional funding.

Well I think that’s a wrap for now. As I move now past the stage 2 and onto the actual research I will post more, and I hope to start getting small sections (which may become papers in their own right) up into the digress.it system within the next 6 months or so.

Come on England!