Prevent automated land buying!

Exactly Weedy. What makes you think if Elanthius succeeds and gets a monopoly, he is going to mark his land up less that other barrons? Why do you have so much faith in a man who is greedy enough to cheat people who had once called him friend, who by the by is also a 'land barron'?

Well, I was trying to decide if I wanted to become a premium member then I found out not only do I not automatically get land for my $10 a month but now some guy is running around destroying the market so I can't even BUY land. Makes my desicion that much easier.

Deleting Second Life now...

There's one less person

If this were to happen, how would you feel (or look) with chalk on your shoes, your crossing a line that didn't need crossing, unless it gives a fair advantage to the SL community your going to get heat, if it leads to other disasterous events, such as (enter previous bot's name here) all fingers will point to you. Why would you put yourself in such a position? The last thing this understabalized world needs is another Bot fiasco.

Speed is not the only difference. Bots will have different limit prices, set based on different market stragegies by their owners. They will compete against each other. None will control the market, but all will affect it. Whether that effect is good or bad, overall, isn't clear.

Furthermore, those who buy land will have different strategies for selling it. They will compete against each other. It is not clear what this will do to the market for land, overall.

There are no good arguments showing that a monopoly is possible here.

Finally, those buying land up using bots have to sell it to make a profit. The more people doing this, the bigger the squeeze to keep the buying and selling prices close (for typical land).

One microsecond will dictate the difference between winning or losing. The faster bot will control the market, through a monopoly.

There are no two ways about it. We already see a monopoly, why would a slower bot make any difference? (other than hammer the search database, for nothing).

From my perspective, yes, the bot owner is competing with a few land barons and land speculators who are online 24/7 swooping on every piece of property that comes up for sale. From my point of view there is absolutely no difference between 10 or so land barons/speculators who corner a market and a bot owner swooping up the land.

The use of the term "evil incarnate" was in reference to the handwringing reaction by a class of users to the use of the bot.

As far as competition I can only speak from my own perspective. About two weeks ago the owner of an adjacent lot to my parcel decided to build a mini-skyscraper. At this point my view became obstructed on three sides. Lag in my sim started getting unbearable. We (I reside on group-owned land) decided to start looking around for less populated, less commercial, land. Well, the prices were ridiculously high, anywhere between 20 and 22K for 1024sm lots. We opted to move our house into the sky instead of spending an outrageous amount, even though our lag problem remained.

Well, this week Elanthious (sorry if I mangled the name) and his little bot army started buying up parcels on new class 5 servers, as they became available. I was able to buy 2 1024sm lots from him at 17500 each. Still a high price in my opinion, but better than what the land barons and speculators were selling for two weeks earlier. So yeah, from my perspective, competition drove down the prices for me. I have no interest in land speculation, nor do I have an particular problem with speculators or land barons. But I also have no interest in paying artificially inflated prices for land.

I looked for two weeks for land. I can't be online 24/7. When I did happen to be online, almost without fail when I started looking at a parcel to buy someone would swoop in, buy it before I had a chance to make a decision, and immediately tag on about 5 or 6K and put it back up for sale. After happening about 10 times this got a little bit old to tell you the truth. So yeah, the bot did the same thing, but I got land for 3K less on a brand spanking new sim, something that was not possible for me 2 weeks prior.

Now as far as inventing literature.... As far as I know this guy did not buy up every piece of land, he holds about a sim's worth at any one time. This is not exactly something to panic about in my opinion. As far as I am concerned land barons are getting a taste of their own medicine. Not everyone who participates in 2L does so in order to hustle every last dime of profit they can out of it.

What is something to be concerned about, as I stated earlier in this thread, is how easily someone can connect with a modified client and wreak total havoc on the entire grid.

Yes but calling people 'scabs' for taking jobs being offered when unioners strike is immoral, as the uinioners CHOSE to leave the job. Obviously they can be replaced. Their choice, their problem.

He has been passing off land to his, wife, mother, alts and who knows where else.

Well, no, not really. If he is doing anything that gives him an unfair advantage or if he is violating the TOS I will be the first to join in with the complaining. Linden Labs opened up the source for the client and allows modified clients to connect. Just because he can code and I can't does not mean what he is doing is wrong.

Now if he has modified the GPL'ed version as opposed to the bsd-like libsecondlife, and distributed it without releasing the modifications, I have a real problem with that. If it is true that 5 avatars are using it to buy up land that tells me that a) he is using more than 1 account to run his bot (violating the TOS?), or he has distributed the modified client to others. If he has distributed, and the modified source is GPL'ed, he is required to provide the source modifications back upstream. I would love to get my hands on that code to build a client and buy me one or two parcels instead of having to manually search, which is a tedious chore to me


If you use US anti-trust laws as a framework in RL for comparison, what matters is if consumers are harmed, not competitors. Hence Microsoft gets convicted, Wal-Marts does not. In the case of the bot, consumers are gaining benefits from lower prices. I saved 9K by buying from him instead of what the land barons/speculators were offering up the week prior. I got flat, pristine land on a brand new class 5 server. The bot at this point at least owns a drop in the bucket compared to the land barons, so where is the monopoly and who is getting harmed?

He posted elsewhere here that he owns a total of just under a sims worth of land, and I assume he was referring to total land bought with the bot. I have no reason to question his integrity. Feel free to correct me on this if you have evidence to the contrary...

Im thinking BadPenguin is another of Elanthius's Avatars, seems to me that he is fabricating stories to justify Elanthius's work, for starters BadPenguin I been seing plots selling for way less than your claimed 22k per 1024, maybe you should try sorting the sale listings by cost per meter, as ther has been a ton sold out for 15-18k per 1024 over the past 2 weeks, gues you never found any of my plots for sale, nor Sara's, Nor richards, geee... strange seems your searching a whole difffernt World, maybe Thirdlife.
As you said you would be against it if it gave someone an unfair advantage... just what do you think it bot does? and yes he has distrubuted the modified client to other people Skye Whitcroft, (maybe the name is spelt wrong).

So yes the rules are being broken everywhere, if you are going to defend someone you better well make sure they are defendable

I was even offered a purchase, they wanted 2 million lindens... little insane

No, I have absolutely no association with Elanthius other than buying three parcels from him yesterday, comments back and forth in the forums here, and meeting his avatar for about 5 minutes yesterday. I am not an alternative avatar of his, nor am I in any group in any way associated with him, nor any way financially tied to him or anyone he knows.

Now that I have made this clear, I might remind you that before you start throwing out any more unsubstantiated accusations such as this that you can be held legally responsible for libelous statements. I have given you no reason to make this debate personal, please restrain yourself from parting further from any sense of decorum in the discussion.



I have no idea who Sara or Richard is. I am a fairly new resident of 2L and found the process of looking for land cumbersome at best. My first land was sold to me by a land speculator who I remain very good friends with. The same land speculator led me to my recent purchase of the land from the bot. All I know is that when the search was actually working I was not happy with any of the parcels that I could find. Almost 90% of the time I even looked at a parcel someone swooped in and bought it before I could and offered it back up for sale at a higher price. I found the entire process disgusting and pretty much gave up until I found out completely new sims were opening up on newer, faster servers. I bought on a new PG sim because a club and another vendor opened up adjacent to my parcel and lag spiked up to the point my current land often became unusable to me. Hopefully on a PG sim less traffic will result, less lag, less commercial activity.

But the topic of discussion in this thread is not about me, it is about preventing automated land buying.



Um, I was the one, who in his "defense", suggested in this thread that if he was distributing a modified client derived from GPL'ed code that he would be required to release the source back upstream. If he was required to release the source every other player would have access to the exact same bot and no advantage would exist. Whether or not releasing modifications to your own wife would be considered distribution I don't know... Regardless, I am not defending "him", I am defending the use of automated land buying. It is only a matter of time before other people start doing similar things... As long as competition exists and prices drop as a result, I am all for free markets. If residents like me who are not interested in land speculation benefit from the free market activity, I am all for it...

It looks like the Lindens are going to do something to make it more difficult for bots to purchase land anyway, so there you go, you won The advantage will swing back to land barons/speculators who have the capital and time to do nothing other than flip land.

And by the way, I was looking for 2048 sm, not 1024. I require this much space to fit my house

Land Prices are dropping because of the new influx of lands, BadPenguin noticed, new sims are opening up, now LL is at the rate of like 4-5 new sims per day, as it was nil previously to that.

So lets not get confused thinking that the Landbot is the reason the land prices are dropping, almost all land agents knew it was coming, and most of us had very little land holdings anticipating it.

Someone somewhere has the impression than land agents are on 24/7....I personally have to sleep sometime, and though on alot, not on nearly that much. I have seen land agents "swoop" in and buy land, though i personally dont do that... question i wonder is, how long should someone behind you wait for you to buy a property before its ok for them to buy it? I mean after all they have to go thru the same buying process as anyone else, if your at a property, and you want it, buy it. Don't think badly if someone else does buy it.

Just for clarification, Elanthius is a land agent so its not like its a smart coder learning how to beat the bad land agents.

I guess the impression of all land agents being bad peple is our fault as we didnt bother to defend ourselves the whole time we where getting flamed on these boards.. guesss we where too busy doing something more worthwhile

Oh and as for Badpenguins comment on libelous statements. get ahold of yourself already, my god man you can dish it out but you cant take it right? wasnt it you that was twisting words earlier? Yes it was. Lets not be a hypocrite here.

The point is what Elanthius is doing is , morally wrong, ethically wrong, and could very easily be against TOS, let alone knowingly dragging down the entire system. And that alone should be considered by LL a premeditated attack on the grid

Not once in this thread have I directed comments to you personally, or about you personally, whereas you accused me of "fabricating" stories and being an avatar of the bot.


Need I say more?

You don't understand the GPL, see a post of mine earlier in this thread.

It would not matter if he gave 1,000 people a copy of the modified software, he is still not required to give it to you. His only obligation is to the 1,000 people he gave it to and anyone that got it from them (and so on).

Just because it's licensed under the GPL does not mean that anyone can ask and receive a copy.

Yep, spot on. The recipients of the source are free to publish it if they choose, but nobody is obliged to make the code available to the public at large. And given that the recipients are Elanthius's family, it's not terribly likely.

And as I stated earlier, people making bots using libsecondlife have no obligation to provide the source even to recipients of the binary, as it is BSD-licensed, rather than GPL.

The wierd gets wierder.

Ok, so its 1am and some land deals come up, and I TP there. Can't buy land, getting data errors. So afterwards, a few more people show up, they can't buy either. I try relogging...nope. Try buying lot nearby...nope.

Ninja bot shows up...buys land.

Then another plot shows up on the search. Can't buy it. Others can't either. Bot shows up, buys it too.

So I ask Live Help

Harry says "Weedy, looks like there might be an issue with buying land."

I asked, why can the bots still buy when nobody else can. I even offered to show them the lots with the time claimed..... no reply. I suppose the transaction is logged and Harry has his hands full with other business.

Still, am I the only one who sees this as fishy?

It's probably something to do with the confirmation step, where it checks your account type and tier etc. Presumably that part is failing, but the bot doesn't need to go through that step. Land search was wobbling at around the same time, sounds like general SL problems than a (another) conspiracy.

I had the same experience earlier today. Really ticked me off that I beat the bot to the plot and yet the bot still got the land...

Hmmm, now two of you have said you beat the bots to land, I'm beginning to wonder if it's actually being able to miss the confirmation step out that makes it so much quicker, rather than the automated searching and teleporting.

In that case, I wonder if a human using a streamlined client to beat others to land would meet with the same resistance that a bot has?

Excellent post!!!

I didn't say he would owe a copy to me, I said he would owe a copy upstream.

But he wouldn't owe a copy upstream either. In the open source world, it's considered a polite thing to do, but it's by no means obligatory.

You're free to do anything you like with the source, provided that you give or offer to give the source to anybody who receives a copy of the binary, and that you tell them of this offer.

In the case where you're merely redistributing a binary or recompiled source (with no modifications) you can at your choice point the recipient to whoever you got the source from, rather than provide it yourself.

The recipient is free to do whatever he likes with the source, such as compiling it and giving it away, compiling it and selling it, modifying it for his own use, modifying it and giving it away, submitting the changes back upstream etc. The only requirement is that the recipient is also bound over to give or offer the source to anybody who receives the binary from him, in the same manner as he got the source from you.

When you modify it for your own use (and "your" can refer to a company or an individual) there are no obligations whatsoever upon you from the GPL. The GPL only covers your rights to distribute, not to use or modify.