How to lose 2000 USD.

Thank you, Stephen. I do believe latency was an issue in this instance - and the instances that you have described and that others (including myself) have experienced.

I really think that the 5 minute period before the land is actually set for sale is a good idea. That way it remains unlisted, and people can double check their work before they go on. Sure, it sucks when you're cutting a bunch of land anyway, but such a time limit can allow for (1) crashing after a pricing error, (2) fixing the pricing error, (3) compensate for network latency issues.

Is it you?

This seems pointless to me. If the seller didn't even read the about land page which shows the size of the parcel and then didn't read the "for sale" page which includes the price you're selling at, the rate per sqm, the size of the land etc before they clicked Done and then didn't read the pop up warning them all sales are final then they sure aren't going to go back and double check the parcel within the next five minutes.

What might help is a 5 minute or 60 minute or 24 hour time period AFTER the sale in which the seller can revert the parcel back to themselves and return the money. Although even there I've had people come to me two or three days later and ask for parcels back. Although, to be fair, that's pretty rare.

All your arguments against are not taking into account the latency issues that more than one person has described. Now, we may *all* be insane and incompetent, or the problem may exist. Again, because *you* have not seen the problem it does not mean it does not exist.

And as such, I'm dismissing the rest of what you said. If the world is as you see it, there would be no latency issues and I would think you had a valid point where people don't pay attention. However, since there are latency issues people would have a time to recover from mistakes before bots such as your own would purchase land.

And that might actually help bot owners such as yourself since you wouldn't have to grumble so much when reverting. N'est pas?

My suggested solution is far more inconvenient for the buyer than yours is so there's no need to dismiss it as an attempt to avoid finding a solution.

I really don't see how a five minute wait before land goes up for sale helps at all. People will not double check what they have done and your latency issues will affect them during this five minute period just as much as it did before they set it for sale.

All of this might be moot since it just occurred to me that my suggested solution could lead to an endless supply of very clever scams involving swapping land for cash and then recalling the land. Also, recalling a parcel might require many resales to be unwound which could be very unpleasant.

All in all the only solution might be to revamp the entire land selling system but it's hard to devise a system that is entirely fool proof. Although, it shouldn't be that damned hard to make one that isn't completely crap.

Encryption in this case doesn't seem like a solution. No matter how you move the cookies around on the plate, they are the same cookies.

As far as a LL Code Review - that happens for official releases (thus they are official releases). Bot clients are basically deviations from official releases. I haven't written one, but I have been exploring how they are written for various reasons. I don't plan to compete with land purchasing bots as I really don't want to deal with that sort of stuff.

What needs to happen is allow a fudge period for when stuff goes wrong. A crash, latency and other issues could become issues for users if they have not already (this *is* SL), and encrypting adds more processing need of a system while granting little or no value.

This line of discussion is familiar. I have seen it before with reference with the Great Copybot Scandal which has been.... kept alive by conversations but not by anything which has actually *happened*.

What *is* interesting about Copybot is that it became an issue which was addressed by ToS and Community Standards. Once that was done, things quieted down except for the occasional person who pops up and says "Don't forget Copybot!" as if it were the Alamo. It was zealously overstated by the press, and no one to date that I have heard about has been 'attacked' by the copybot.

It is possible, though, that LL needs to be reminded of the fact that Copybot was made against ToS as a measure which may have been effective. And they *did* do that rather quickly, as I recall. Within a week or so.

But we had people rioting and closing stores (and really no reason to). To date, I still get anti-copybot spam in some places which... is amusing.

Nods. Serious nods. Resellers get clued in on a lot, but what really sucks are the newbs - like the lady who was trying to transfer that waterfall land to a group and somehow sold it to your bot for 1L (which you returned). As someone pointed out, the system is not well explained by LL and actually the documentation for all of it has become more and more difficult to find.

Granted, if she had 5 minutes to figure it out she probably wouldn't have. I did walk her through the process which took about 30 minutes, but it is impractical to do that for every person who screws up.

But if they were not informed, did they really screw up? We're not arguing law here where ignorance is not an excuse. We're talking about people who pay for a service which they effectively are not receiving.

This is exactly the solution I was thinking of (and I have worked in RL property since the 80's...): it should be absolute child's play to insert a 24 or 48 hour escrow delay, during which the deal can be annulled by vendor or buyer. This would suck the heat out of the land system almost straight away (people buying would have time to look for alternatives, though of course their L$ account would have to be debited when the escrow period STARTS not when it ENDS, for obvious reasons...), and from comments here that would be no bad thing.

(by the way, what you said about Ebay: I got a great bargain at the beginning of this year in a fair auction on ebay. The vendor spat the dummy, and refused to sell, saying he simply wanted a higher price than the market was prepared to give him. Despite all of Ebay's warnings that "a bid is a contract", when push came to shove, an offer to sell turned out NOT to be a contract, and so far as I can tell, this shill is still online... so it ain't always as clean as you might think)

(by the way 2, the whole "mistake" driven outlook here could be another case where SL falls foul of local jurisdictions. From several points of view, the way SL furnishes a pseudocurrency can look a lot like the way a credit card or christmas club company furnishes members credit, under UK law, and the whole "cooling-off period" concept is firmly regulated in that market by the '74 Consumer Credit Act)

I have some real estate experience myself in the real world. In the real world, real estate agents facilitate sales and earn commissions - whereas in SecondLife, it's 'flipping' by the nature of the land system of SecondLife. Code is Law, as Lessig would say.

The reason the 24 hour period for escrow is something I do not back is because of this same reason. A lot can happen in 24 hours, especially in the unzoned wasteland called mainland. In the real world, it takes time to build things which could adversely affect land value. In SecondLife, it takes moments. Also, that escrow period can adversely affect the entire economy of SecondLife unless the entire system of land is addressed, which would include the grandfathering in of other aspects of land within SecondLife.

That it is called 'Land' is about the only commonality that mainland has. This 'land' also submits to Moore's Law, script and prim pollution and lazy convergence of Beowulf clusters.

Also, unlike land in the real world, the limits of land do extend all the way into the sky whereas because of a case with an airport and a chicken farm, outlined in Free Culture by Lawrence Lessig, this is not the case in the real world. in SL, 'Property' extends all the way to the pixel heavens with the only effective limits being ban line height and build height. These limitations were effectively put in place as zoning requirements but aren't recognized as such by the majority of residents.

I find it difficult to find value in a 24 hour escrow period given these virtual land issues. I find it more reasonable to give people a 5 minute period whereby people can address mistakes. That is a minor inconvenience in the grand scheme of things.

A 24 hour escrow period would have to have penalties, etc, to be fair in such a scenario. It becomes a big issue with more code and therefore more ability to inject human error.

I stick with the 5 minute fudge period.

Why is it I need to confirm permission for someone to hug me

But not to sell my land?


I think the default setting should be land sales require confirmation by the seller.

This would be (with a lil effort) possible to disable to allow for offline land sales, etc.


In real life when you buy or sell property you have to sign on so many lines you get sick of it. lol is one blue box saying "Do you agree to sell this much land for this price to this person?" is too much to ask?

Well, the difference is that for the hug, you have to be present. Forcing people to be present for land sales might be amusing for some but is largely impractical I think. As far as your question, why do you not have to have permission for the seller of that flexihair?

Answer: There are permissions in place which a person can set which can assure sales under certain conditions, and the fact that flexihairbots do not exist. Yet.

Also, land is effectively no copy, mod, transfer - with finite numbers - whereas flexhair dispensers just look up a code in the asset server and drop a reference in your inventory. Slick, huh? Land doesn't go in your inventory. The way that some people use their land, maybe it should but for all intents and purposes let's say land in your inventory is a bad thing. Stuff gets dirty.

sure, it could be set up to NOT be the default. but let's be serious. The average resident doesn't bid on sims, so is unaware of how much of a pain parceling up about 65,536K of land into smaller pieces and selling them. In fact, viewed that way it could be said that such a thing would increase land prices as more resellers would be likely to sell large pieces rather than small so that they don't get pestered all the time - or turn the thing off, as you suggest.

So then, the people who are the most vulnerable and who are responsible for land pricing then get burned. So what do they do? Good business practice dictates that they increase prices to offset the amount they are burned. On a larger scale, this will balance with the person who screws up the least having the lowest prices (but not necessarily the best land). Meanwhile, everyone who wants a new 512 has to wait around for the person selling the 512s to quit playing on poseballs and having a real life long enough to click "sure, sell it to them".

These factors, and more, are reasons why I think that land should have a grace period after setting for sale so that people can undo things. That way they can crash, they can log back in, and they can adjust as needed. if they screw up too many times, land prices aren't directly affected too much and the person who is enabling better land to be bought than those trashy digs with the ad spam around them won't be punished.

Come on. 5 minutes. And people are asking for 24 hour escrow and dialogs that may be lost in a large IM overflow, among other things? 5 minutes. a few lines of code on the server end saying "wait 300 seconds".

Your taking my example far to literal but comparing it to items permissions. What I mean if I have to confirm someone can animate my avatar by defualt= Yet selling my land which is the riskiest thing in SL I can do - I dont have the same protection.


Why would I have to be Present at the land site to click "x wants to buy your land in y sim for z Lindens Do you agree? "

Merely online.

In order for the 5 minutes to do me any good Id have to be present so I can edit my land properties when Ive realized I goofed. And of course Id have to realize I goofed in the first place. -- Still I dont see why 5 minutes is a problem. Heck make it 30. No one needs to be able to insta-sell their land anyway.

Like I said give the option to shut it off. I suppose it could be "allways shut of for me" if I was a auction reseller. I think Mainland should have flat prices from LL BTW.

Sorry, I thought it was a good example which showed why there is a difference. Have you wondered why poseballs for couples don't require permission of both parties? Perhaps that would be a good place to start.

Saying we should change the whole system is relatively easy, but does not account for all the present land out there.

A good solution has to.

And saying "the whole process is shutoff for me" leaves people open to the VERY same thing this thread started off about in the numbers on the order of thousands of REAL dollars. So it won't work.

All right, I usually do not like sticking my neck in making predictions, especially for something as eccentric as SL, but here goes. The landbot problem WILL get fixed. This will not happen in the near future as it seems to me that LL has NO motivation to fix the problem. The motivation will come however. This latest incident and LL's inaction on it serves as a signal to landbot owners that any and all unethical, dishonest and thieving tactics are tolerated by LL. Therefore the problem will become worse, much worse.

Sooner or later someone who is either a friend or relative of a high ranking government official or an investigative reporter will get burned bad by this behavior. When the outpouring of negative publicity that results begin washing ashore at LL, they will beat a hasty retreat from the "landbots are not a TOS violation, we dont get involved in dealings between residents and what are landbots?" statements and fix the problem.

Of course, it makes better sense for them to fix it NOW, but that's not going to happen. They will wait until the storm hits before running to the store to buy water and flashlight batteries and theplywood to board their windows up with.

Its coming, its just a matter of when.

Goddamnit. Stealing land has been going on for years it is not a bot issue. I was buying huge parcels for L$1 from people trying to transfer it out of groups since I started flipping 16s 6 months ago. Long before bots were on the scene. According to reports half a dozen land flippers were at that parcel the oh-so-unfortunate Italian lady lost. Every single one of them would have bought the parcel if only they were quick enough. Maybe most of them would have given it back afterwards (better to ask forgiveness than permission), but maybe not.

Banning bots won't change a thing wrt the issue being discussed in this thread. It is a massive red herring. If you want to claim that we need to define an infallible system in which neither side ever makes a mistake or feels ripped off then that's great. I'd say it's impossible.

Lovely.

Not true, if the bots let people swoop land faster it is an issue. It amplifies the problem.

However, you are right in saying Land Swooping - not bots - is the Problem leading to what happened in this thread.

When someone makes something that is "foolproof" god creates a better fool.

Stealing has been going on for millenia. Nothing will stop it either. Bots are an issue because they have become a very effective tool in the hands of a few unscrupulous people. I don't think it is possible to create an infallible system. I am not enough of a fool to believe that. Let's concentrate on what IS possible. 1. It is, or at least WAS, possible for LL to freeze Landbaron Merlin's accounts, refund the stolen money and ban the vile worm AND his computer from SL. LL has made a concious decision to ignore the situation. Fine, its their platform and they can do what they wish. 2. It is possible that the next or some future "oh- so- unfortunate" victim will be someone with connections. When that happens, and it will, all hell will break loose. Frankly, I do NOT want to see that happen.

I am not advocating this, far from it. I am pointing probable repercussions which may result from this. There is a real difference between being a rainmaker and a weather gauge. I believe I am acting as a weather gauge here. Also, I have been wrong before, I'm not infallible.

I respect you, Elanthius. From what I have read about you, you are an ethical and honest individual, in spite of your love for land bots. We all have our flaws though! lol My dissagreement with you on this issue doe snot lessen my respect.

Now, have a very nice day, Godamnit!! LOL

Well put. I was thinking along the same lines after catching up on this but never would have thought to quote Lawrence Lessig.


P.S. not that it means much in the scheme of things but that definitely raises your reputation in my books that you read and can accurately quote Lessig when the situation calls for it.

The details are bloated. It was just Count Burks there. I cannot speak for Burks. The rest of us showed up after. And from the looks of things, it would seem your summary of what we would have done is somewhat incorrect.

What is surprising is that your bots weren't.

Without bots don't you think the girl's friend standing directly on the plot would have bought it faster than people tp'ing in? It only take's a bot a split second before anyone even realizes what happens. Bot's benefit you and a very select few, on whole they are bad for second life and it's residents.

I'm really sorry the bots have made you go broke sweety but it is no need to be rude to me.

I was wondering that about you actualy LOL. but in all seriousness I did sell 6 plots this weekend and divided and terraformed and reset the prices a few times without incident so I guess I am just lucky or something.

Why not throw a law from real life into it. Make it so land sales can be backed out on by either buyer or seller to avoid mistakes like this. no one looses this way. One gets land back other gets money back. It would solve these errors once and for all. Dose not even need to be 72 hours like in real life. Make it 1 hour.