Prevent automated land buying!

I'm quite curious about this concept of consulting a legal professional regarding matters in SL, as it has come up in the forums several times in the past.
Once. in this forum, someone asserted that he was consulting not one but two lawyers regarding LL's liability for the copybot fiasco. Someone else said they were consulting with a lawyer regarding not being fairly compensated for SL's downtime under 24 hours. I'm sure there are other examples. I've seen countless times threats to sue other individual members for "libel" or something in that category. Most of these assertions result in the thread being swiftly locked by the mods.

Perhaps I just don't have the right connections, but the handful of times I needed to consult a lawyer in my real life, it was quickly determined that his fees would bankrupt me.

For example, I was in a car accident with someone who had no insurance. There were no injuries but lots of property damage. I called a lawyer, who kindly informed me that it would only take less than a week of his firm's time at the normal rates to easily exceed all of my property damage. With no bodily injury claimed, the lawyer wanted nothing to do with it. (I took the other driver to small claims, and I lost. I blame this on my absolute absence of legal experience. I had to file against my own insurance policy instead.)

For another example, I have a mark against my credit from a landlord from over 6 years ago who thinks I owe him money. I have all the documentation to prove that I don't owe him jack, oh, if I only had the opportunity to show them to a judge and clear the whole thing up. Alas, the the landlord has never seen me in court; he simply sold my "account" to a ruthless collections agency and I've been harrassed and haunted ever since. For this situation as well, I have attempted to secure a lawyer. And, once again, it would easily be cheaper in real terms to just pay the amount they say I owe. ( i refuse, out of principle, despite it being against my best interests on the whole )

As a final example, my friend has a personal patent in the works. If it is approved, it could earn an enormous amount of money. Yet, in the meantime, it is costing him thousands of dollars just to have a lawyer he can CALL on SPEAKERPHONE for consultation purposes while at the Patent Office. This has gone on for several years.

So, it seems that the going rate for one-off lawyer consultations for any purpose (excluding ambulance-chasers) is about $200 an hour.

My quesiton is this... how much did you pay for this consultation regarding SL's Terms of Service? And I don't mean to sound sardonic. Honestly, if you really do have a lawyer on call who you can ask these random things at a rate within that of the third-world-economy scope of SL, I really want to know how you landed that, please! What am I missing, here?

Free.
It helps to know people in the business, and even better to be releated to them.

EDIT:
Got a responce.

"The subset is something smaller of the big thing. It is the big thing that changed. The new language allows players to use and create more software. Previously, it had to be exactly the same function. Now, there is more flexibility because it can be a "substantially similar" function."

So, it would seem to me that creating a client that does nothing but buy and sell land and doesn't request prim/texture data and whatever else to "reduce overall load" doesn't count as "substantially similar fuction" as the official viewer.
Make it so that it works as a normal viewer and has a "I want some land now" button, then it's not against the TOS.

Elanthius, you have made the claim that "I'm not exactly sure how you work out that I have a land monopoly. My average land holdings at any time are around half a sims worth." We all suspect that is untrue, and I know it for a fact...Elanthius sells land under several groups, and under several different names...I know so, because he made the mistake of telling me so in a conversation.

I ran into him at a parcel one day, before it was known he was using a bot, and he was supposedly upset that he couldn't buy because "all his money was tied up, waiting for the group money to be disbursed". I realize now that he was probably the owner of the land under another name, just sitting back and watching sales of HIS land.

But, not knowing this, I suggested to him that instead of putting his land in a group name, that he keep it in his own name, so that he wouldn't have to worry about waiting for group funds to be disbursed every morning. His response?..."Oh I own far too much land to keep it in my name, i have to have it in quite a few groups to keep it straight"

Personally, I dont' have any difficulty at all keeping land "straight"..since it is all listed under "my land"..but then again, I only keep about two sims worth of land under my name.

So, here is the creator and user of the landbot, a fairly advanced technological achievement, that can't keep 32000 meters straight?...Yet if you look at his profile, you don't see any land groups, or real estate groups...just a couple that try to convince people to give him small parcels..and some land rental groups, for communities.

So his claim that he only owns half a sim?...well, that may be all he has in HIS own personal account, but he owns sims worth in groups and alt accounts that he controls himself, just groups that aren't published and visible. Makes you wonder how many of the big land groups, are him in disquise?

So, Elanthius..if you are BS'ing us about your holdings...what else have you lied about?

I don't know why I bother to respond to all this nonsense but I believe in honesty. To be fair since the land crash I've massively increased my land holdings, as I suspect a lot of barons have. Plus, I've totally redesigned my land strategy so that I hold land for longer. You can believe what you like, but here is a full and accurate account of my current holdings.

I own 158560sqm of rental property, 90% of which is rented out and the rest is being held for future rentals or beautification or something. I hadn't previously included this amount in my "half sim" since I'm not planning on selling it. My rental holdings increased by about a sim and a half in the last few days due to a few lucky breaks.

On top of that I now own 102448sqm of land which is on the market in various forms for sale.

I do not sell land under several groups. I have a few trifling meters in some side projects of mine such as the Universal Network and Bots Plant Trees but none of it is for sale. Please, please, please list these secret groups and names under which I perform my nefarious dealings because I'd love to know them as much as you apparently love keeping them secret.



Uh, so when I turn up at a plot and I comment that I can't afford to buy it that is an obvious sign that I already own the plot and am just pulling a double bluff. It's so clear now!



I need land to be kept in a group so that multiple people can adjust the prices, buy land, edit land etc etc. When I'm not around I want Skye to be able to handle things for me and when neither of us are around I have various bots perform maintenance. I'm fundamentally a lazy man. If you have the energy to keep maintaining land without wearing your fingers to nubs then all the best. I for one prefer the simple life.



Why would I tell you I own half a sim when I secretly own 40 bajillion sims? What cunning benefit is there for me to underplay my land holdings? Further, how freaking stupid would someone have to be to hold that much land in a volatile market like this? Really it's none of your business how much land I own or don't own and I can't believe I'm getting sucked into this childishness.

Actually, I give up, it's true. Anshe Chung and Prokofy Neva are my alts.

You're forgetting the word subset again. A program that logs on and prints your balance in text on the screen is performing a subset of substantially similar functions of the viewer.

No "I'm" not forgetting that part.
It is performing a subset of fucntions that are similar, not performing a similar function using a subset of functions.

Above was the responce from my lawyer given the exact wording of the TOS.

I'm just wondering...
It seems that First Land meaning (land for the landless) is gone, replaced by some business proffit meanings.

I see the business there too, even more with open source, just need to have some experience in programming, make a few bots and scan everysecond 24/7 for new FL releases.

BUT... with time it will be more and more running bots, seconds will be subdivided to miliseconds or less, and land will be to the lucky bot that scanned that tiny part of time.

Well, if you ask me I would say it's inevitable... as, if we live enough in this outside world, sooner or later we'll have bots fighting our stupid human wars (all kind).

So here comes the reason of this post: in the real world we cannot avoid this, we are somehow bound to it. But I believe (and hope) that we do can avoid it within SL.

I'm just wondering what will happend if First Land cannot then be sold, or joined, or anything.
Just USED, in the way of living, constructing, placing a house, a little shop if you want, etc.

If things goes well, you are enjoying the life, and want to move on (say have a bigger land).. you will have to return that First Land to LL, and buy your Second and futures Lands at market price (not sure if you'll have the L$ 512 back, or have a discount of the same value in your future buy, or none of both - LL will have to figure that out). This way seems to bring back (a priori) a nice flow of First Lands (if that will discourage land barons to keep buying FL) and also bring back the FL original meaning.

I'm still a newbie, trying to understand some facts within SL, so I will like to read your comments, and if you think it'll be a good idea, or not, to make a proposal for that.

I'm just wondering... that's all.

i am kinda annoyed by SL, i only started playing today as a friend reccomended it to me and i can not get my hands on any first land or even cheap plain land i only want a 512m2 piece of land i dont want to put my real money into this game until i see if i like it... but its just my luck that it seems to be a load of evil twisted people grabbing 1st land then ripping us new people off

I agree, if some greedy programmer can make a bot that steals from the poor (landless newbees) and give to the rich (land baron with no moral) and if Linden Lab allow this, then the First Land meaning is gone. That's a reversed Robin Hood and they are even proud of it!

Why don't Linden Lab tag First Land so that it can only be bougth by someone that doesn't own land already? That should make things more even.

I have personally verified that it is indeed so tagged.

And that's nice to know, thanks for that clarification. However it doesn't change the picture much, cause if I or one of my fellow landless have a automated land buying bot, then all others are helpless. So it's the hole idea of allowing automated land buying bots that need to be dealt with.

And what prevents a land baron from creating a fake newbee account, applying the automated land buying bot and then 'reselling' that First Land to himself? Only moral and where does that leave us?

Land Sales by Resident
Month Total Square Meters Sold by Residents Avg L$ Paid Per Square Meter
January 2007 46,087,808 12.30

Land for Sale Today
Residents With Parcels for Sale 3,136
Total Parcels For Sale 13,126
Total Square Meters for Sale 8,811,280

Uh, there's 8 million meters for sale. I think you should be able to find something to suit your needs even using the old fashioned method. In fact 48 million meters have been sold in January alone. That's about 566 million lindens. I can assure you I didn't buy all that.



Welcome to 6 weeks ago when people were doing exactly this manually (no bots needed!) and everyone was complaining about it.

http://secondlife.com/vote/vote.php?get_id=2783 Just wondering how many people need to speak up in order for the Lindens to really take notice and take real action.

from Land Sales and Rentals to Feature Suggestions.

when talking about a Feature Proposal, Feature Suggestions is both the proper place to post it AND the most helpful to your cause.

IIRC the feature voting system has been explicitly abandoned by LL.

well you do believe they give a shit about this "non problem" ?

Where do it say that?

There is already a thorough discussion of this matter, only 5 topics ago, in this very forum.
/13/c3/163207/1.html

please post your comments there instead.

moderator, please merge the threads (or delete this redundant one)
thanks.

/139/6c/150340/1.html

When last heard from, it was one of the features slated to be replaced in the "customer service overhaul". Of course, that hasn't happened; and most other features that were scheduled to be improved have been removed without replacement.

i have merged Sarah Nerd's thread "Landbot Vote" with this thread, as they are essentially bringing attention to the same topic.

(merged thread starts at post #162 and ends with #16

Hi Folks,

I've been thinking of how this could be all dealt with. I've written a page (see link below) giving 3 possible solutions to the problem. Its quite long, but I've given a summary below.

http://flatoutjoint.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=29&Itemid=43

If you don't want to read it all the page, here is a summary of what can be done:

- Solution 1: If you can't beat them...join them! If Linden doesn't do a thing, then the creators of the land bot could create a service from it. I've given a description on how it could work in the link above.

- Solution 2: The land bot developers could release their source code changes to the community. But that would make a complete mess of things.

- Solution 3: Linden Labs needs to alter their Buy Land window to have a Verification Code system. This will require the buyer to manually entering a visual code before they can press the Purchase button. This would initially stop the bot developers, until their bots can read the verification code, which maybe tricky!

On that page I have created an example picture of how it could look like, check the bottom. Otherwise, if you want to see the image, click on the link below:

http://www.flatoutjoint.com/images/stories/games/secondlife/buylandverification.jpg

Apologies if someone has already mention a verification system, but I've not read every single post in this thread or other threads regarding this. Besides, the picture above gives an idea on how it could work.

I guess their could be other solutions, or agreements, etc. but we will have to wait and see if LL do anything.

Although Linden Lab has said they'll deal with this issue, please continue to show your support by voting at http://secondlife.com/vote/vote.php?get_id=2783. Don't let this get back burnered. Remember, you have 10 votes you can commit to proposals, so please commit as many as you can. We currently have 1675 votes from 272 separate voters, which places proposal 2783 in third place according to highest votes among currently open proposals.

Also, please continue to email Philip Linden (philip@lindenlab.com), Robin Linden (robin@lindenlab.com), and Guy Linden (guy@lindenlab.com) and express your concern about this issue. Let's make ourselves heard! Thanks.

We could ask LL to program an event listener that fired whenever a parcel with a specified set of parameters was set for sale. This would stop all the db queries needing to be run all the time, be simple to script, and put everyone on an equal footing.

So instead of db queries by a few, we'll send out land-for-sale info to all, wanted by the user or not?