Systems we can implement in world to make it harder for "fly by night" scoundrels.

Seing LL continue to allow a flood of infinate free anoymous accounts for less morally aligned people to make disposable business alts, I think we need to look at systems we can implement in world to make it easy for customers to do some of the work themselves to protect us and themselves from buying from irreputable sellers, a way of saying to customers "this shops been here for 6 months not 6 days", so the chances are this is a good place to buy or invest money and not risk having your items deleted from your inventory or being scammed.

My idea is this to reduce the effectiveness of copybot theivery we introduce a freebie system that shows a shopper how long in days a store has been on this plot, somehow referenceing back to a main server with a displayed daily password that could be checked by a shopper each day at other boxes in other sims. So when a shoppers shopped at 3 placs showing the word frog, they would then know they can't trust a counter on someones land that does not show this word. The word would reset at midnight.

How could we script something that refered to a database so there might be a day counter that displays how many days someones been in business on that particular plot but shows todays password so people could check randomly against the main database object, could a few top scripters come up with some freebie system like this that just required a permanent server prim stored somewhere?

Maybe this is crazy, but maybe it might lead to a better idea too.

Feel free to add any other ideas we can use. We have some of the best creators in SL here surely we can come up with and easily make something we can freely distribute that can make life harder for scum.

How about hanging?

Hanging is good - impaling is better *nods vigorously*

Not sure this password system would work but it's a good topic to discuss. There should be no anonymous alts for a start, that's an issue for Linden Lab to address, we are supposed to give real information.

There are plans in the pipeline to create some sort of trusted seller status, LL have gone quiet on this as they work out the fine details and the initial proposals were far from ideal but this idea should be developed.

Demond claims he was once, long ago, a griefer type. Not a serious one but one nonetheless. Since they can change their ways and become assets to society, I think hanging is too severe - castration would be better.

Upon making a complete hash of it, they will then ask residents for feedback, completely ignore it and then implement it anyways.

Firstly, they need to go ahead and require RL info and a 10 USD deposit during account creation. If the user can behave (IE get no warnings or temp bannings) for a full 6 months, refund the 10 USD, even if it's in the form of L$. Then, they need to go ahead and limit the number of accounts per a form of payment. Maybe they could implement a removal of No Payment Info on File accounts that haven't been used in over two years. Of course, they'd have to actually email people at certain intervals to see if they still want the account and if they do, to log in to reset the counter.

For the trusted merchant... honestly, unless LL is willing to get involved in resident to resident disputes, then they really should just butt the heck out, because some people are going to hold LL responsible of one of LL's "officially trusted" merchants "screws" them over.

The daily password is the only way I can think of autheticating the days count displayed, otherwise copybotters would just make a prim that says they have been in business for 3 years.

It's not perfect, maybe they will keep using different alts on the same plot but then hopefully people would wake up to that eventually.
The counter has to remained rezzed on the plot to kep counting days, so for people who like to move around a lot it wouldn't work, and it may be a slight disadvantage for vendors.

No, I think about it more you may also have to display the business name or owner name too.

This system shouldn't cost anymore than it does to rez the free prim in your shops. I'm sure someone who's had long term land would host the server prim for nothing, I'll host it if noone else will although multiple servers would be better somehow. The server code with the password algorythms only need to be know by a couple of scripters who have mod copies of the script in case someone leaves SL. Someone better in textures than me can make a distinctive logo for the prim, with a catchy name suggested by someone too.

This is above many of my skills to do this and I don't have the networking contacts either, and this needs to be agood idea of course worth giving a go, it wouldnldn't work overnight, but eventually it would become a normal thing to see at any shop I'd hope or customers would think of shopping elsewhere. If this was combined with LL doing something like deleting all stolen conten from the data base then it may be more effective of course.

I'm trying to model this as a freebie business rating system that requires no administration and is simple for customers and owners to use.

Company policy.


LL will never do this. Ever.

To require some sort of verification/validation to become a merchant is something they might buy into, though.

Deletion of the pelvis attachment point?

You're right.. they'd keep the 10 USD no matter what!

I figure I'd set the bar high for 'em, that's all. Besides, once upon a time they did at least require the 9.99 USD payment for an account.

I'd be satisfied with them using the idea for becoming a trusted merchant, however. I already gave my info to Aristotle once, why not again?

Hmm, I seem to be the only one with ideas, they are really bad ideas or only one who cares, unless we can get more detail on how to implement these proposed hanging/impaling/castration systems?

1 - It would take 5 minutes to whip up a script to copy the password off my neighbor at 12:01AM every day.

2 - Knowing if a store is selling copied items is not going to change the average persons temptation to get something that is usually expensive for dirt cheap.

3 - Anyone with 60 minutes of research and 5 minutes of prep time can rip off full sims and set up yet another store over an untraceable IP and with a newly generated CPU ID. In short, the platform is insecure. There is nothing we can do on our end to fix that.

I don't see where Brenda clarified what they should be hung by

1. Possibly true, I was unaware hovertext was able to be read so easily. It could be manually done I guess. maybe every 12 hours instead, make them work to cheat. Or something less easy to read by script?

2. maybe it will if LL deleted all stolen content regularly or even if we olbies spread the rumour they did

3. Well that is exactly what this system is designed to work against, people moving their shops continually will have low business days shown, the counter would reset to zero days everytime it was re-rezzed. At the moment it's too easy to do exactly what you said, if people felt there was risk buying from someone who was only a few days into business they might look more carefully or consider spending their cash elsewhere.

At the moment putting our heads in the sand, hoping it doesn't happen to us and that the theives making money for nothing as we continue to protect their rights to have endless disposable alts will go away when they get bored.

This seems like the prefered business stradegy, as long as it's the oppositions stuff getting copybotted not ours why should we care?

Hang, Draw, and Quarter - much more fun for the spectators coz it lasts longer and they can really get to know the victims before it's "curtains".

More of a prankster really, but yeaaaaah a few avatars might have bounced off the bumper of a vehicle or two... I have a bit of a predilection for trap doors... okay I am gonna be quiet now Did I ever claim to be completely reformed? grins...

Zapping the fly by night griefers might pose a bit of a problem. Killing anonymity would certainly add a new wrinkle to things, as would posting a 'bond' of X dollars, for instance... though both of those things might do more harm than good.

Maybe some kind of reasonable check, like is already done now: you can't buy or sell X amount, unless you've been here a while.

Thing is, that just means that people will stock up on troublemaking alts, and let them age as needed.

And sometimes I wonder about who actually does the most damage... consider some of the HYIP / Ponzi scheme guys were around for years. I would be willing to bet that there is an evil oldbie behind most of those fly by night accounts.

Perhaps the best way to stop griefing, is to hard link the 'evil alt' characters to their 'good' counterparts, and let all the characters suffer the same results if caught.

A police bot.

Might be possible to create a bot that can scan the grid looking for items that are structurally similar but have different creator names.

or if you're from the UK you may prefer to call it a copperbot

In-world implementation of systems would not do any good I think. We do need a sensible system from our provider at LL.

Let's assume they want to keep the free anonymous accounts. Even then it would be no problem as long as they make it impossible for any unverified account to sell items. Only accounts that are matched with real life information, can sell stuff. Anonymous account? Transfer of items disabled.

Second, DO something with the information. As soon as a verified account starts selling copybotted stuff, permaban the account, and undertake legal actions. Plus, delete all stuff created by the scammer.

Third: Start by cleaning the grid from all content already known ripped. BIABS of which it is known that they are only containing ripped items. Many people don't even know that most BIABS are about ripped stuff. When I was a newbie, I started selling those even, how was I to know about it?

The solution does not seem to difficult, but apparently this is still no real priority issue. Maybe the class action suit will change this.

Let me first say that I have no idea about programming.

But I see that copybotters, griefers and scammers are relying heavely on day old accounts.

I absolutely love the fact that everybody has the same tools to create. however, maybe when you need to work to get those benefits, it might become harder for them.

i do not mean money: I mean avatar age and experience.
if for instance you are not able to do surten activities untill you have spend an X hours/days/weeks inworld, you are increasing the barrier for those fly by account holders.

dunno if it is technically possible, but the idea might be helpful.

Example: when an account has been inworld for X hours, the build button becomes active.
another X hours before you are allowed to ad content to an object
and another X hours before you are able to set it for sale.

this offcourse should be related to the account, no matter if it is your 1st or your 97th
And clearly related to "time spent inworld actively"

'deducting idle time, and disabling the advanced menu until they come of age'

Free accounts are fine, but if the person will be doing any type of business at all in SL then they should have to purchase (?) some sort of business license (or provide some RL information).

I think the most effective way to combat this is to educate people. Ive been in SL around 5 months and am just now becoming aware of this issue. I only became aware of it because I was looking for product info online. I imagine not a lot of your average customer becomes aware of this.

Word of mouth is powerful. Maybe more merchants need to be more vocal about this ingame. Get the word out on which stores sell stolen stuff and also get word out on reputable stores as well.


There will never be a way to counteract theift. You can create all the fancy gizmos you want, but there will be someone with a workaround just around the corner. Educating the customer is the biggest defence.

I think new accounts should be on a probationary period for a while, even paid ones. Newer avatars sometimes do things that are considered griefing but they're not aware it's against the TOS. It takes a few weeks to figure out what's going on in SL.

A probationary period could have limits on buying/selling large purchases, like land, and areas they can visit such as sandboxes.

I agree!

This!

The biggest problem with this and every other idea based on restricting privileges based on avatar age is that it is easily circumvented by creating an army of alts and simply letting them age before using them.

There was an idea floated here that would tie such restrictions to *active* time spent in-world, however. That idea merits further exploration.