Traffic Bots Against the TOS of LL?

Of course it's not a right to have someone come and cut your lawn. But it would be if you'd paid for it. That's what we do each month with LL - pay for the land and all that goes with it.

Search is not part of the service you receive from tier.

It's part of paying to be listed in search, not owning land.

And by paying for the service (or any service) you understand per the terms that LL can change the service, fees, or terminate at their discretion with out warning.

Therefore it's not a right to be listed in search, nor is it a privilege it's a paid service.

The option to be listed in search is currently part and parcel of owning land, and is part and parcel of what we pay each month to own land. It's in the Land box. The option is not an extra, and using the option is all part of land ownership - it's what we pay for.

Having the checkbox doesn't cost you anything, but you're not included in search if you don't check it either.

Checking it on the other hand does incur a small fee so it's not part of your tier, it's a separate - paid - service which is independant of tier altogether.

You're missing the point. Having the option to show in search is part of owning the land - part of what we pay for each month in tier.

I didn't say that showing in search is part of the tier. I said all along that the *option* to show in search is part of what we pay for when we pay tier for the land. The option to show in search is a right that comes with the land - what we pay for when we pay tier. It's not a priviledge. It follows that taking up the option and showing in search is a right, not a priviledge.

But usually you don't have to pay a fee for "rights", do you? Priviledges are things you pay extra for, rights are things that should be yours, regardless of how much extra money you have.

You have the right to use the option to pay for the privilidge of showing up in Search once you pay for land tier.

But to actually USE that option you must pay a fee seperate from tier, ie; the "Show in Search" fee of $L30/week on top of your monthly tier fee.

Otherwise, you will not show up in Search. Because it is not your right as a tier paying premium member or land owner.

With rights come responsibilities.
If there are rights associated with SL Search then there are many.
We could say that people have the right to expects that search results will not be gamed.

Whether or not you have a right to be listed, you don't have the right to game search.



Do you have a right to freedom?
Does that mean that the courts may not order your imprisonment?

I was merely correcting Kitty's statement that it's a priviledge, and not a right, for a parcel of land to be included in the SL search, Sling.

I actually believe that neither the term privilege nor right are the correct terms now that I have given it more thought.

It is actually an agreement - a contract in fact. You pay tier and membership and in return the company agrees to give you a certain service which at all times is subject to change as they reserve the right to do so.

The contract that normally should clearly outline exactly what the company is offering in return for your fees is shockingly absent in this case and is another example of LL's frustrating vagueness. Though I think when you sign up for membership there maybe a terms of service agreement you have to click through these days.

Phil is right in the fact that paying for tier *and* owning some land gives you the option to enter search for that land, it is clear because the option appears to you where it was once not present. However Mort and others are right because being able to exercise that option is not an inherent right but an agreement subject to terms and conditions defined by LL in the contract you have (maybe implicitly) agreed to. Part of that contract is that they reserve the right to deny you access to any part or all of the service at their discretion just as with any other service from anywhere.
Therefore being delisted is perfectly possible should LL decide to do that, today or at any time. It is just that they have not taken those steps with anyone yet who they have not outright banned from SL.

Indeed.

You have no right or privilege to use a phone or the internet.

You may be given an option to access the service for a price, but you are then bound by contractual obligations (you pay, they provide).

LL gives you the option to pay for listing in search, but it's not your right or privilege to be listed. It's an additional service offered on top of existing ones.

On the whole, I don't disagree with that, except that I still say it's a right. It's not a right that can't be removed in the future, but the implicit 'contract', as it stands right now, makes the option for an owned parcel to be listed in search a right. My thinking is this:-

A piece of land is bought with the option to have it show in search, among other things. It's part of what you get when you buy land right now. It may be that, in the future, LL decides to incorporate the abily to prevent a parcel from showing in search, as a penalty for something. In that case it will known, and the possibility of having that facility removed will become part of the implicit 'contract'. But that's what could happen in the future. Right now it doesn't happen, and what is delivered with the land (that option) is part of the implicit 'contract'. Therefore it is currently a right.

How can anyone possibly know how LL feel about it though? Specifically the difference between them just not having a practice of delisting people generally today and them specifically avoiding delisting people because they consider it a feature of your contract? There is no evidence I have seen to suggest which way LL think about it - the presence of the option in the land dialog does not carry any inference other than it is offered to you the option of paying for search at that time. If one day you were to go to your land tools and find it disabled then you would only know the offer had been rescinded or more likely the option would be there but would not have any effect on whether your parcel is listed.

Also consider this - how can we be certain that no one has been delisted today? Just because we do not hear of it does not mean it has never happened even once.

We can't know how LL feels about it unless they tell us. But what they feel about it doesn't matter until they actually do something about it, and we're not dicussing what they may do in the future. We are discussing what is right now.

Right now, the option is delivered with the land, and it can be assumed to be delivered with the land even before purchase, simply because that's the way it is right now. It's not an extra, and it's not something that we can only keep if we are good. It's part and parcel of what is delivered with land today, and it can be expected to be delivered with every piece of land we buy. If I go out and buy a piece of land right now, I buy it knowing that I'll get that option - because it's part of what I buy, as are other things that come with the land, all of which I have a right to, until LL says that not everything will necessarily come with land from now on.

Kitty's post was seemed to be today as you pointed out but all other posts I have seen seem to be discussing today as well as making forward looking statements. Only you Phil keep saying we are not discussing anything but today. There is nothing to say this discussion cannot be about today and the future. Who gets to decide that? I certainly am discussing today and the future. Also when you say discussing today only - do you mean literally today or perhaps the next day also? Strictly speaking this discussion should be about the OP question but I guess now that has been answered in a fashion it is about anything we choose to discuss.

My assertion is that you cannot possibly know that just because the option has never been disabled for you. You cannot look at the result of a policy (the land search option) and know for sure what the policy entails completely at the back end.

All anyone knows is that when you look at the land options for the moment they allow you to participate in search. That could change in 2 minutes time for some people - how would we know? That is why nobody can correctly infer for sure that it is this way because it means "X". All you can infer is that they allow you to particiapte for now.

You can move it on if you like. I was still talking about now. That's what the discussion was about. We all know that anything can be different in the future.

I really don't mean to be antagonistic Phil, but just because you are discussing today only does not mean the discussion is about today only.

True, but the "right" vs "priviledge" bit was, because that's how it started, and it didn't change.

Btw, I didn't perceive anything as antagonistic

Good I am glad

Agreed it did start that way but I really do think the conversation has changed to include forward looking statements which is no big deal and even in the context of today I think there is merit in saying that nobody knows for sure. Could be that little option box means that the land guarantees everyone who has land the option to be listed in search, but it could also be that it isn't a guarantee and it could be that someone gets their parcel delisted before the very day is out.

Highly unlikely for the general case granted but even now, for something they did, someone, somewhere could be getting delisted << >> or even have been delisted in the past and nobody can prove they are/have been or are not/have not except LL.

I would imagine that we would have heard something if it had happened already.

LL may well be thinking along those lines, and may even be already writing it into the code - it may even be there already. But it would be really bad if they suddenly did it without announcing it because people do buy land for business use, and with the full intention of listing it in search. If LL suddenly disabled the option, or suddenly banned a parcel from search, it would be diabolical simply because the land had been bought with the understanding that it can be shown in search.

I don't think LL would spring such a sudden surprise. If they are going to incorporate something like that, I'm sure they would announce it as part of a new rule - something like the current change with ad-farming. They gave notice, which gave ad-farmers time to do something. I think they gave notice about banks too, didn't they?

Personally, I don't mind if they incorporate something like that, a long as they give some notice to allow those who might be affected, especially financially, to make changes.

Phil all the notice they need to give is already in the ToS... where it states they can change the service at will.

Just have to be right, don't you?
Now that you are online anyway, care to react on the "bots have same load as regular avatars" piece?

Linden Labs can implement every change they want, including pulling the plug, without notice, that is how bad the ToS is in fact. But that does not mean it is a sensible thing to do, with important changes they have to give people a bit of time to adapt. If they do not, they will not surprise me, but it would be a very bad move towards established users.

They place the same load on the login server and network backbone as any avatar.

The only thing they don't affect as hard as most avatars is the asset servers.

Should try an open sim system someday... and see what you can't see on the LL ones.

hey!

SOME people buy land for business - OTHERS not
a lot of people wanna buy/rent land for a private home, and there are a lot of : arts and culture sims, fly sims, race sims, gorean and other combat sims, sims to explore, ...

sl isnt business only.

im realy sad cos of all the bots, pics, cheating for ->
best ranking, best selling, best best best, money money money, more more more ...

yes im running my alt cos i can work better this way -> combatsystem weapons(cannot shoot myself) shapes, skins, attachments.
yes i will show my stuff on my alt
yes i will sell my stuff - but i dont expect to earn billions of bucks
no im not targeting at best ranking in search

last not least - yes ive learned again - thank you all and have a nice time

Nonsense, take the effort to get back to my post that was directed to you, and showed 5 different things that put a load on a system. We are not talking about a single open sim, we are talking about the total system we are all using.

You know, I mentioned often that I do not mind a good discussion. But you manage to completely ignore my posting about the way bots and regular clients make use of resources, and then come up with a vague remark again like the above. Of course that fits your arguments better but is has gor nothing to do with discussing.

How many times do I have to tell that the incidental "concurrent logins" issue has got nothing to do with the amount of connections itself? We have seen it happen at around 50k users, whereas this week I saw 66k users and could easily log in. It is NOT the amount of users, but what they do, that strains the network.

Correct. But if they change the service without notice, and it costs people real money because they bought something that LL offered, LL would likely lose in court if it went to it. The ToS is not the Bible, Mort, and ToS's cannot override people's rights.

If LL offers me a 1024 parcel for nnnnL$, and I buy it, they cannot deliver only a 512 piece for that money regardless of what the ToS says. Similarly, if LL offers me a piece of land at nnnnL$, and land includes certain options, and I buy it, they cannot remove any of those options at the point of sale, regardless of what they write in the ToS.

You need to think more realistically, Mort.