Stephen Toulouse, the Xbox Live director of policy and enforcement, led a session at the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle this afternoon about the "air marshals" of the online gaming service -- the Microsoft group that monitors gameplay, gamertags and other activities to make sure they comply with the rules.

He warmed up the crowd with this Biblical-style reading from what he called the Xbox Live "Book of Enforcement." The video picks up a few sentences in, after Toulouse introduced the story of a gamer who had signed up for Xbox Live, only to be struck immediately with a common form of temptation. Funny stuff.

Highlights from the session: Enforcement on Xbox Live isn't automated, despite what you might have heard, Toulouse said. You can file inaccurate complaints against your online enemy all you want, he said, but you're wasting your time. The team also tracks complaints filed by users to see patterns of false reports.

Sometimes people can use a gamertag for a long time in certain games, such as "Halo," only to see it flagged and revoked when they enter a game that's suited for general audiences, such as "1 vs. 100." Someone in the audience raised that as an example of what happened to him, and Toulouse said that's the way it works.

The system isn't infallible, Toulouse acknowledged, but he said it's very accurate, and he cautioned against pretending to be innocent when pleading your case in the Xbox Live forums unless you truly are without fault. Also, you're responsible for what your buddy does when playing under your gamertag. Blaming him won't work.

"Uno" and other games that use video cameras are ripe for abuse, and new members of the Xbox Live enforcement team are assigned to those games almost as a rite of passage.

Update: Larry Hryb, better known as Xbox Live's Major Nelson, has the full audio of Toulouse's presentation on his podcast.