Philip Linden himself released a blog post via email today, condemning Emerald and advising residents to use an alternative Third Party Viewer.
Malicious Viewers and Our Third-Party Viewer PolicyLate last week, we discovered a denial-of-service attack that was being served through the widely distributed Emerald third-party viewer. This is in direct violation of our third-party viewer policy (part 2, section d, paragraph iii).We have removed Emerald from the list of third-party viewers, and are now in touch with the Emerald team to discuss what can happen next. We did this to do our best to protect the safety and security of Second Life users. We will not tolerate a viewer that includes malicious code, nor will we tolerate development teams with a history of violating users’ trust or disrupting their lives.We take privacy, safety, and security very seriously, and we will act to the best of our abilities to protect it. We have not yet disabled logins via the Emerald viewer, but will do so if we feel the software and the team behind it is not able to meet the standards we’ve set. While Emerald is currently the focus of our attention because of what happened recently, all third-party viewers are held to the same standard, and must comply with the third-party viewer policy.The third-party viewer directory is designed to be largely self-policing, but we take our responsibility to act very seriously when problems come to our attention. Our goal is that you should feel comfortable using many different viewers in accessing Second Life. While there are always risks involved in using a third-party viewer, we are doing what we can to minimize those, and we encourage and deeply appreciate third-party development. Our new Snowstorm project is an example — allowing third-party developers to deliver more directly and rapidly to the Second Life viewer.If you have been using the Emerald viewer, for now we would encourage you to consider either one of the Linden Lab viewers, or an alternative third-party viewer.
Here’s the video link for the Tonight Live with Paisely Beebe show that aired last night – the Emerald segment is at the end of the show, about 30 minutes in or so.
In addition to that, Arabella posted info about the Emerald changes, on her own blog, talking about the changes to Emerald and the future of Emerald Viewer.
ModularSystems.sl no longer hosts anything about Emerald, although the blog is still active as of 21:16 GMT today, and there’s a cached blog entry here that says LL gave Emerald a list of things they need to do before they will be put on the TPV list again.
Lord GregGreg comments again on the state of things, and officially links his Emergence viewer, and states that he is now working with the people at Virtual Ability, who help with aiding disabled people on Second Life.
Stay tuned, there’s likely to be more about Emeraldgate during the week.
Hooray, Philip! It’s about time LL took some decisive action.
As far as the Treet.tv interview goes, I am NOT impressed. I don’t care for splitting hairs. nor do I care for excuse making.
Far from being a dumbass, I’m still confused as to how Arabella Steadham can be a “neutral” party considering she is now “the owner.” These two terms are contradictory. She calls herself the new owner, she calls the developers her colleagues – where is this neutrality?
As far as complete transparency, where is the current list of developers? “We haven’t had time to make it.” Like it takes more than two minutes to type and post it.
With each thing I learn, I grow less convinced that Emerald will be reliable and trustworthy.