Blizzard goes after Bots in WoW

This is not true - the viewer source code is distributed under the GPL license which *does* allow a third-party to make changes and then sell the changed viewer. It even allows a thrity-party to make no changes and then charge for the viewer should there be a market for it.

From the Free Software Foundations own FAQ:

Does the GPL allow me to sell copies of the program for money?

Yes, the GPL allows everyone to do this. The right to sell copies is part of the definition of free software. Except in one special situation, there is no limit on what price you can charge. (The one exception is the required written offer to provide source code that must accompany binary-only release.)

I think too many people are collectively lumping all types of Bots together in the same statements. I think most would agree that Bots which are casuing harm should be stopped. There are (at least conceptually) benign bots such as Land Admin Bots which can help people like Desmond Shang of Caledon manage their estates with less time and effort spent, Group signup bots that automate a tedious task for club and shop owners, Combat Bots for training purposes, etc. Then there are unethical Bots that might not actually cause any extra server load that is noticeable but cause social problems - such as (IMO) Grid Sheppard, and Land Bots. The there are the worse category of Bot that not only causes social problems but put extra strain on Sim and Grid resources, such as camping Bots and other traffic gaming Bots.

I don't think the first grouping of bots really cause any problems for anyone, the second grouping should be (arguably) disallowed if the Lindens are interested in fixing social problems with the grid, the latter group should be disallowed in the interests of grid stability
at the very least.
Until the grid can support many hundreds of thousands (perhaps millions) of concurrent users this latter group harm SL for all residents.

We should qualify which Bots we are talking about because not all Bots are bad at all. Some are really useful. Call it like it is:

Camping Bots are bad
Land Buying Bots are bad
Traffic Bots are Bad

Lets discuss those and leave the benign Bots out of the discussion.

You are mistaken about the timeline. The thing about this community is that it is full of true believers with agendas of various kinds and within their own ranks they infight as well.

Some people try to make "Open Source" like their religion or at least their idealogy. To others it appears juvenile entitlement.

Prove me wrong then Rebecca

I stand corrected.

however, I do stand by the other two points, which should be more than enough.

Copybot was based on libSL's reverse engineering efforts and the assertion at the time was that one part of their open source package was a testing tool that needed very minimal work to be turned into an "theft" tool.

In a simplified view open source was directly responsible for copybot and most of all the other bots that have sprouted up since, it just wasn't based on anything made available by LL.

This press release puts the announcement of the SL viewer soruce code release at Jan 07,

http://lindenlab.com/pressroom/releases/01_08_07

This forums discussion is just one posting about copybot way before then:

/321/94/149490/1.html

This work could have been done and the end product with no source code could have been sold in a widespread fashion or released as a free binary download (shareware, public doman) for exactly the same effect. Open Source had no impact on that.

It is well known, libsl reverse engineered the software well before the source code was officially released. That LL didn't stop them, is the same as giving them the source code.

The fact that the Copybot fiasco happened is ample proof that a lot of people in that community have little respect for content creators.

No, it isn't. Now you're quibbling. Open Source was not the cause of Copybot period.

Blizzard going after bots is nothing new, they have a long history of periodically cracking down on bots and hacks dating way back to the earlier days when Diablo 2 was their "big" game.
Only difference is that they tend to be more enthusiastic on the crack-downs with WoW as it is a subscription based game.

Absolute rubbish - it is not the same at all. That is like saying Microsoft reverse engineered how Word Processors work to come up with Microsoft Word and so WordPerfect may as well have given them the source.

EDIT: Besides you are backtracking - you said source *was* released before copybot - not it might as well have been.

I wonder (not being familiar with WOW) if this is in response to end users complaining about bot usage?

The community of hackers and coders who preach open source and also get upset about IP rights are the same kind of people who reverse engineer software.

In a perfect world Open Source would be fine.

Both end users and Blizzard do not like it.

Scammers from all over the world see a way to make a quick buck, just like we see in SL and starting farming it.

Apart from the general usefullness of some Bots I think the other main reason that LL does not disallow Bots is that the policy is unenforcable to a high degree - how can you detect a Bot - sure *some* kinds can be but then the Bots just use full clients and then you are back at square one with a bigger drain on resources. In a world where anyone can go afk for a long time - you cannot accurately determine Bots.

It's totally enforcable, just like keyloggers or viruses. A pain in the neck but still beatable.

That is simply untrue, offensive and just shows how ignorant you are about open source and the people who make it.

Pie ?

"Could have" doesn't change what did happen, libSL was responsible for copybot and libSL is open source. Without libSL copybot would not have existed at that exact point in time.

Could someone have made one anyway? Sure, but the skill and time required to reverse engineer SL's - at that time mostly undocumented - protocol and the skill and time required to comment out a few lines are vastly different.

I also very much doubt that anyone interested in "stealing" a few $ worth of content was going to invest the time it would take to start from scratch, it's just not economic or remotely worth the effort.

"Open source" wasn't responsible for that since it's just a concept, but it did facilitate it. Looking forward, if third-party "open" grids do take off as so many expect then the exporters that already exist today will just be used to make content from the main grid available as freebies on the unregulated grids. SL relies far too heavily on DRM to make "open" a good thing rather than a bad thing.

If you had any true understanding of these things you would know that there is a war against keyloggers and viruses. A war that cannot be won by either side. The virus/keylogger hunters lag way behind the virus writers and can only do something about them after they have happened and caused damage. Also more and more of your computers resources goes into searching for these things as time goes by.

If this principle were applied to SL and there was a Bot scanner the effect would be the same - the grid would suffer for all worse than having the bots and you would be in a war you simply cannot win.

Blizzards has successfully fought it. They added Warden Software to the boot up, long ago, then the hackers changed it around so it was harder to see, but this guy will end up in deep trouble. Blizzard have banned many more people then have ever been active in SL.

!! Quit !!


Pie

My point here Kitty is that there was nothing special about open source that made this happen. Reverse engineering has been going on for decades in the software community and whilst the fruits of that is often release into the wild the software is often not open sourced.

In this instance without open source - some enterprising content copier would have created their own client to do the same (which would not have needed the whole functionality of LibSecondLife - just a subset) and then released it.

My point was that as the effect is the same between both software paradigms that whether it was open source or not is irrelevant. No body is saying that CopyBot was not a bad thing - just that open source was not to blame - it could have easily have been closed source and caused as much harm.

Just like saying a crowbar from one particular manufacturer has no bearing on whether it was used for a crime or not vs one from a different manufacturer.

If that was true then why are we getting another clamp down on Bots in WoW? It is not the first time they have gone after bots.