Warning! Self-replicating Land Scanner on many sims!

Oh here's a nice pic of the lil bastages. They are next to the default cube for you to get a size comparision. And ya transparent.

Also can be found at 192,192,400

My thoughts exactly Ice. I study hard to make my scripts as server friendly as i can, spending several hours to tweak them to cause as less server load as possible, and then comes some asshat and does this... discouraging to say the least.

Is this it? My friend has a scanner thing and we went up to 400m above my land in Nakaa, and this is what it found.

Finder: Searching for lb v2
Finder: lb v2 found at <64.00000, 64.00000, 400.00000> with key 7d466d8c-6233-c8e2-1db4-65311fc356a4
Finder: lb v2 found at <192.00000, 64.00000, 400.00000> with key f864c533-8428-ad6b-6e58-cc8b42909746

Yes, exactly.

I've been trying to get permission from LL to have one of my heightmappers placed in void sims, and planned on even renting the Linden sims for a day each to make my system more friendly.

This system's been around for months, and it's honestly an abusive system.

My scanners ended up confused for something like that during the only time I wasn't present for heightmap scans, and I will never do it again, not without permission from land owners. I've also been obtaining 16m2 parcels with a group I'm in, to have land I own for my rather passive scanners, which would be placed near ground level when implimented. (right now Chromal Broadsky's system has been placed on these squares, so his efforts can also be utilized.) Though I fear the small chance someone'll think I'm doing something agressive like this, and compare me to those that have.

Times like this are when I consider freeing up my server space.

It doesn't sit above my land..it moves very quickly across my land and rests over a neighbors...But its definitely one of those things.

I understand the mechanism by which land scanning is enabled has to observe ownership rights and the TOS, but there are SO many ways around that. For example, the player I was helping found land scanners on his land (which is heavily trafficed). We weeded them all out. The owner simply surrounded the property with scanners, literally right on the edge of the property line.

The Lindens said this clear invasion of privacy was legal and that no action would be taken. As long as the creator has permission to place the objects on the land they need to exist on, what and where they scan is not an issue. It was interesting that the Linden mentioned that the person doing the scanning "was a good guy" and that he surely wasn't up to any mischief. Everything all equal there eh.

You should require PERMISSION To scan my land. I do not pay my monthly fee to help somebody else gather data, and don't want my land or the people on it inventoried by other players. I consider it the equivalent of pointing a video camera through my living room window, forcing my participation in a survey by illicit means, or standing on the sidewalk in front of my house and writing down details of everybody that comes and goes.

It's a privacy thing. Stay the hell off my land and leave me alone with your infernal schemes.

lets all put scripts up like these and bring the grid to a hault, then i bet they will become a priority. jk

I agree in totality.

Dear Hiro Pendragon,

We've looked at these a bit in the last few days.

The "listen" function being used is a data channel between
the "satellites" and their owner or creator -- not a "chat" monitoring
channel. They aren't particularly cycle-hogging scripts either.

Scanning for publicly available data ... such as parcel availability
and price ... isn't a violation.

Version 1.6 of SL will allow parcel owners to preferentially return
the objects of named residents. Someday, we'll have the ability to ban
a named resident's objects.

A central rezzer producing "child" satellites in a sim isn't a
violation, but we'd be glad to return it if it's placed on Linden
land, or otherwise without specific permission.

Feel free to contact us if you have any questions.

Yours,

Customer Support
Linden Lab

I was unaware price was possible from script o.O

But having a virus is.
But having these over someone else's land when they don't want you there is.
But spamming all of the SL grid with your objects is.

CS:
* Disturbing the Peace Every Resident has a right to live their Second Life. Disrupting scheduled events, repeated transmission of undesired advertising content, the use of repetitive sounds, following or self-spawning items, or other objects that intentionally slow server performance or inhibit another Resident's ability to enjoy Second Life are examples of Disturbing the Peace.

Global Attacks
Community Standards violations which broadly interfere with or disrupt the Second Life community, the Second Life servers or other systems related to Second Life cannot be tolerated in any form. Such actions will result in a minimum two-week suspension and a review of your account for probable removal from Second Life.

From the T.O.S.:

5. USER CONDUCT

5.1 Participant Conduct. In addition to abiding at all times by the Community Standards, you agree that you shall not:
...
(v) take any actions or upload, post, e-mail or otherwise transmit Content that contains any viruses, Trojan horses, worms, time bombs, cancelbots or other computer programming routines that are intended to damage, detrimentally interfere with, surreptitiously intercept or expropriate any system, data or personal information;




This is somewhat reassuring, but just like spam e-mail, people will find new ways
around this. We need to ban this behavior now and put an end to it. It's spyware,
plain and simple.

Yes, I did think to ask him to get rid of them.

Yes, eventually he did.

Yes, it took a whole bunch of IMs.

Yes, it was quite annoying, and not something I should have had to worry about as a land owner.

Most importantly: YES, HE SHOULD ASK BEFORE STEALING PEOPLES' SIM CYCLES, REGARDLESS OF HOW MANY ON A PERMANENT BASIS. Flying through a sim or visiting does NOT equal 24/7/365 abuse.

-Flip

Lindens Have To Take This Seriously!!

in a situation like mine, where its a small group where different group members own different items, it would be impossible to autoreturn items because a member of the group will get screwed over at the same time.

I've said it twice before, and someone else has already suggested it in this thread. But, a fact is that the Lindens have not made any public statements concerning these objects which appear to have affected many players over the past year.

Ranting about the objects on this forum will accomplish nothing... it's been proven. So, that leaves one sure-fire method to gain the attention of Lindens:

Flood the skies with similar objects. They don't have to be land scanners. Create objects that cycle texture color and cycle alpha from invisible to solid every second (as fast as LSL allows.) Set them to be temp on rez, set them to rez a new instance every 60 seconds or so.... and call them stars! If the "Stars" lag the entire SL mainland, you'll have successfully forced the hand of Linden Lab. Yes, you'll have to suffer through the lag, but I promise that you'll get a better response from LL by deploying thousands of stars, rather than thousands of forum posts.

Sadly DoteDote, but you are probably right :\

Hi Customer Support,

How much for a land/price scanner? I want to be a l337 land baron too and have a huge advantage over 99% of the other customers. This way I can identify cheap land VERY quickly and snatch it up before someone really needing the land can find it. Then I'll raise the price and resell it to them at a much higher price. This will keep low priced land off the market ensure most of land I am selling looks like an attractive price without those pesky low price plots giving me a bad name.

Thanks,
Annah

ps. Will this still be your stance once we get a few 1000 of us using them in every sim?

Got off the phone with Customer Service - who was very professional and raised a few legit thoughts.

Thank you very much to the Lindens (whose names I'll omit) who have been working on this problem and are continuing to examine this issue.

...

My main concern has been that of the Categorical Imperative - if lots of people were doing this, it would grind SL to a halt. The Linden I spoke to on the phone expressed the stance of LL that currently it's not being seen as a big impact or violation into privacy. Should, however, it get to that point, whether by one player or a collective set of data miners, then a solution would have to be taken.

The fact that LL is looking for a technological solution I believe is the way to go. It's tough to dictate behavior, and it's much easier to simply take people's ability to grief away & to empower residents to stop it.

Individual issues:
- 1.6: The land tools won't stop these from coming onto your land. They may/may not aid in detection. As players, we should lobby for including temporary on rez items in the land detection scheme.
- Worm: It looks like these objects are not self-replicating, but originate from one or multiple central spammers. This evades the worm policy. (Also, the TOS policy really is gauged more for Internet-type worms). For this issue, I raised the concern that new thoughts on what a worm / virus is should be considered.
- Scripts to stop this: The script discussed would likely be considered spamming a player, even if it was limited to one per object.
- Global Attacks: This avoids being considered a global attack because at the moment the use of resources is small.

...

So, basically, what we're dealing with here is actions that are riding the crest of the rules, but aren't quite defined. I've asked that this be appealed, and LL has stated that they are looking into technological fixes for this.

I would still encourage everyone to speak out on their opinions of this in a civil manner.

For the record, again, I have nothing against Pete Fats - I was surprised to see his name attached to this. I do have a problem with his scripts, though.

What we can do:
- Voice your opinion
- Stand up and state clearly that we want land owner rights to privacy and non-interference
- Try and get proof that these are lagging the server
- Try and get proof that there is an excessive number on the sim
- Lobby for a rule that these kind of scanners should have to be non-temp-on-rez.
- Lobby that current rules of worms should include this kind of invasive script as a violation

What NOT to do:
- Take any form of retaliation. This is just sinking to the Lowest Common Denominator.

I'm going to post this post in the beginning so new readers to the thread will get the response by LL right away.

Ya, that'll fix their asses. Those arrogant Lindens. Let's lag the shit out of ALL the sims. While we're at it, let's burn down all our houses, disband all our groups, and throw away everything we've made. That will REALLY make them notice and help us get rid of the lagbots.

We'll be WAY better off. Plus land will be cheap, another big plus. And almost nobody will log on, so there won't be any bothersome bling.

Good posts Hiro and great info. But in the meantime while we all wait, these satilite using land barons will ensure most of us never find good deals on land given their efficiency. If these dont lag the server then someone should sell the code or post it on here for us all to use.

This script has been reasonably well tested but is not amazingly user friendly. If you don't understand what it is doing, please find someone who does to help you. Please note the warnings in the comments, if you edit this code, it may spam the scanner owner with IMs or support@secondlife with e-mail. Either of those may be viewed as offensive.

As this script itself a high altitude scanner, it has been written to automatically die after an hour. I suggest putting it in a highly visible prim, and I absolutely recommend that you ensure that it is placed only over your own land.

For the record, I have spammed neither the "lb v2" creator or support@secondlife. Now for the blindingly colored script.

Oh, one counter-argument was that this was like hoochie hair or other laggy attachments, which players routinely have.

I countered that players have a consumer mentality, and that when they buy stuff they assume it's okay, whereas these scripts are intentionally done.

I also countered that players can be kicked or prevented from coming in land. The satellite scripts can have neither done.

Actually i have just had a conversation with Robin linden that assured me she will investigate and do what she can to remove the objects and possibly take disciplinary action against the perpetrator. I DO have something against Pete Fats, exactly because of this situation. I don't care about who he is or if he is a long time member of the community (or a long time griefer in this case) His enormous irresponsibility and lack of common sense causes an objective damage to the performance of the sim i live my second life in (and many others) and nulls my efforts to keep that sim performance stable, that costed me several hours of study on scripting.
I honestly hope that the responses Hiro got are because of a disconnection between customer service and the actual functioning of Second Life, otherwise it would be quite alarming if the Lindens are so oblivious of the behaviour of someone that not only can be considered under every aspect a lamer but even a plain griefer. i hereby hope that the strongest disciplinary actions available will be undertaken against the perpetrator of said actions, both to pose an example to give future wanabe smarties something to think about (And the permanent ban of a charter member and big landowner, and possibly of all his alts would be the perfect example to wannabe griefers, and a way for LL to demonstrate that griefing is a crime that has to be taken seriously by everyone, and being part of the beta or whatever won't protect anyone from retaliation) and to cut the problem at it's root.
I will not retaliate myself, even if God knows i am definately tempted to. Lately i have seen all form of griefers escape any form of justice with just a mild warning or not even that. To me it seems that most of the lindens are taking discipline a little too lightly, and that causes both a growth in griefing acts, since griefers feel safe and a growth of the temptation to deliver a swift "justice" with my own hands. Temptation i will resist, but that causes a certain amount of frustration.
So i hope the lindens will finally decide to push their hand in the mud for once and to take upon themselves the responsibilities brought by being admins of a large online environment, since as for now it seems to me that most of them are taking such responsibilities a little to lightly and in a lax way.

Just my two cents.