Evenbalance.com

I've been going through reading the landbot posts and the general argument from the landbot users is they are not using anything that is not available to the non landbot member. Therefore everything is fine.

For the record, the short answer is the defense fails because the landbot user is bypassing the GUI through use of an external application.

Attempting to justify use of a landbot by pointing out that the TOS does not explicitly include using external applications as an exploit fails because a "terms of service" document is not an inclusive list of prohibited behavior.

If it were, then a good defense would be, "But you didn't say to not use a landbot while I had one eye closed and standing on one foot." Idiotic yes, but as logical as the usual defense.

That there are people exploiting Second Life isn't surprising. Cheating in multi-player games is nothing new and for every online game, there is someone cranking out cheats.

What is surprising is LL hasn't made use of the services of Evenbalance.com AKA Punkbuster.

Here is a section from their info page:

Even Balance, Inc. spearheads the effort to fight cheating in the online multiplayer gaming industry. Our flagship product, PunkBuster™, spawned the Anti-Cheat movement in online gaming several years ago and was the first system proven effective against cheating in online games.

Our PunkBuster™ Anti-Cheat software technology and services combat online cheating in some of the most popular games being played over the Internet today. We also serve the online gaming communities that surround the games we support by keeping in direct contact with players, server administrators and league officials always watching for new developments in the "online game cheating world". We understand and appreciate the tremendous number of resources that game developers allocate toward game balance during game design and implementation. We take on the often burdensome task of protecting that balance out in the real online world where dishonest players (we call them punks) hack and wrongfully exploit the published game for their own benefit at the expense of the honest player who expects and deserves fun, fair competition. Too many online games and related communities have been destroyed by cheating activity over the past few years. Now, honest players have someone on their side ... PunkBuster™!

Linden Labs is very aware of any 3rd party software that they users may run while running SL.

You would be suprised at just how much security they have that you dont know about.

Landbot busters: I think that is what he is talking about - not LL security. I would like to know if we can use this system in SL.

I'm not sure why you think I would be surprised that Linden Labs has security of which I am not aware. Or even how it is relevant to this topic.

The topic is about the need for Linden Labs to make use of the services of EvenBalance and stop the cheaters and exploiters.

In the case of the landbot, copybot, or unauthorized scripts, etc, PunkBuster would detect and ban the user.

All of the arguments over the right to bypass the GUI would be moot since the offender would no longer be a participant in the game.

I don't think PunkBuster will work with open source stuff.

Well that's the entire point of it.

The client side of SL is open source..

/me doesn't get why we're talking about something that doesn't work with open source products.