Land buying Bots are effecting EVERYONE

I do adore it when people screech that it is both "legal" and "progress" to do things entirely outside the bounds of ethics.

Good show, really.

When any given resident opens Search/Land Sales/For Sale - Mainland then selects Search, the possibility to buy a piece of cheap land is zero.

Server and database resources which every premium resident in Second Life pay Linden Lab to access, are being maintained to benefit 3 groups exclusively.

There can be one reason, and one reason only as to the purpose of bots. Greed is the single factor. There is nothing redeeming about this policy. Where communities are concerned, they have created an environment of arrogance and hatred. At the onset of open source, these bots have with aggression, stepped on alot of toes and are laughing in the face of it.

One bot has a hidden group, presumably to ignore residents and obstruct resolution of errors. Another is instantly repricing land and yes, purchasers who agreed to paying the lower price from original seller, paid the higher price from a bot, without warning. Despite changes made to the land sale tools a while ago, people will still agree to sell land to a friend for $1, thinking it's late and nobody is around. And once again, they are traumatized by an unfair system of resolution and another victim is added to the list, so someone can wallow in their PayPal numbers. Then of course, there is money laundering and passing $L around to alts because the business tier doesn't support it, or create yet another alt, seeing how one bot operator has more than the allowable number.

Elanthius may claim that others are not smart enough to code a bot, but that's just a bigotted epithet, which I'm sure he finds quite entertaining.

I could operate a bot, if I pleased, but I'd rather not. I chose to respect those who respect others. I don't think bots will succeed in the long run and I prefer to stand upon the ethical high ground in the meantime.

On a lighter note, the exec at LL have admitted "Landbots have created an unfair land market" and have indicated changes are in the works, which will make bots "a bad business decision".

Meanwhile, you have rights which can be freely exercised. You can ban them or teleport them from your land and you can sell your land privately. If anything, residents should be wiser to real market values when selling their land and this serves to narrow speculation, despite the method used.

One solution to this problem would be for some "white knight" coder to make a landbot freely available to all; then we would all be on a level playing field (at least from this perspective). I believe this is the Open Source ideal. In the meantime, I tend to sympathize with LL on this. The scripting tools are available to all. The land is available to all. It's pretty fair. Those who have written such scripts (or bought them) up to this point should be free to use them as they see fit, within the TOS. This leaves only the problem of one person paying for land but another person getting the title; that issue is entirely separate, and does need to be dealt with by LL.

The current system isn't standing up to itself, let alone 100s or 1000s of bots hammering it to death every 500 microseconds.

Secondly, its not scripts. Bots run greatly different compilations of the SL Client.

I think this is the bot for sale on sl exchange but I could be wrong i know someone was selling 10 of them (limited supply) for some outrageous amount of lindens (lost count of the zero's).

No one should be allowed to use them but I know and can understand why some people might resort to using them in light of others existing if that makes any sense. In other words no one should have one then no problem would exist hehe

Why not change the way "Sell land..." works?

Proposal:
-- Land could be sold at a fixed price only to a specific person.
-- If selling to "anyone", it would automatically go into a one-day auction. Seller could choose a minimum reserve price, and there would be an "auto-renew every day" option similar to classified ads.
-- A modest fee would be charged for an auction listing, say a fixed amount of L$ 10 or L$ 50 or whatever, per day.

Benefits:
-- Foolish sellers are protected from themselves.
-- No financial incentive to operate a landbot.
-- LL gets one more L$ sink.
-- Charging a modest fee would also help mitigate "yellow pollution" (16 sq.m. parcels eternally "for sale" at L$ 999,999,999) which causes the Map to load for-sale data very slowly, while still making it possible for sellers to hold out for a higher-than-market price for an exceptional parcel of land.

The code for auctions already exists. It's just a matter of using it for non-Governor Linden parcels.

- Just a update

From what Iv heard landbox hax now waits 1 minute before relisting.
That is a start atleast.

As a bot runner, Im all for getting something changed, some thing needs to be done to at the minimal to prevent activitys like the hax bot was doing.

And all for a code of ethics for the use of a bot, and such.

But I do not think getting rid of or banning bots will do any good.
Bots them selves can provide a service, and in the end Id like to see things go in that direction, the use of bots is still really young it needs some guidance.


Anway - I think the only way to get rid of landbuying bots is to get rid of the current land system, but that of course would leave almost everyone who replyed to this thread jobless...

So people are going to fuss over that if thay do.

Realistically, what services do land buying bots such as yours do for the community other than make you money?

must.....flip....land......faster....... must.....

I never said landbots them selves - but bots in general

How about an example that happend at around 5am this morning:

A land barron such as your self was lightly sleeping while his assicates account was compermised (id assume). This assicates account then begain to release a hole sim worth of parcels for around 1L each.

The land bots sprung into action of course, gobbling until there tier was full..

Now these where comeing from a group - so if any one who got on them wanted to resell them, there would be no way said landbaron could of tracked them.

The the landbot's got around 200,000L+ worth of land, several honest users grabed, knowing it was a mistake, and then several unhonest, grabed I would assume.

Of course with the the honest landbots policy - this was returned, free of charge.
It convently moved those he needed to talk to to just a few places.
And we where waiting for him to contact us.

From my understanding, he lost around 100K, maybe more maybe less, however it It could of been a lot worse, selling parcels you know cant be tracked without LL, isnt easy for anyone to resist.

well i guess to help business LL decided Bots made sense.

Too bad =/ I dont see the value.

Just becuase its legal and allowed doesnt make it right.

If someone's land business is so big they cant handle their own real estate =>

This is a huge area that could have meant employment for residents.

Same with other potential bots.

But this has nothing to do with the present controversy. People were complaining about "land swoopers" a long time ago in the old forum archives. And those land swoopers were hardly kinder and gentler than the modern-day bot operators. Most of the time the luckless noobs didn't get their land back.

PS, for what it's worth, I have personally witnessed Elanthius commit acts of whimsical generosity. After buying a 512 sq.m. for L$600, he sold it back to the person for L$0 and then gave her L$ 10,000 to "remember him by". And then when she couldn't figure out how to buy the land back (had already downgraded to basic), he came back and helped out with that.

It would be like a Philip K. Dick novel to have a class of bot bounty hunters who roam the grid orbiting bots, and then one day one of the bounty hunters realises he... is a bot himself.

There is no level playing field if the rules themselves allow unethical behaviour; ethical people will not stoop that low even if it is legal.

What's unethical about buying land? I just don't get it. Is it still unethical if I just happen to have OCD and a faster computer than everyone else?

That much is obvious.

what is OCD? just currious becuase Im trying to follow this.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

thanks

there is a difference in someone doing the clicking themselves and a bot of course -

The person who click themself has to make the decision to buy or not as they click.

They know whether or not they are taking advanage of the situtaion. They can see two people standing there and talking about the land , etc.

Elanthius and his wife Skye have also been very generous with me on land dealings.

But the land broker who impresses me the most in SL is Sarah Nerd. Time and time again Sarah has gone out of her way to always do the right thing. She busts her ass to make a living in this crazy virtual world. In addition to listing land low so more can afford to have their own plot in SL, she adds tremendous value with her freebie store and her club, the Angry Ant 2. I hope folks who don't want to risk listing their land and having a bot grab it will sell to Sarah directly. No one deserves your trust, or your business, more than her.

None of the old guard, absolutely none would wait to see if two random people hanging around have mistakenly set a parcel for public sale. They all buy first, ask questions later.

It seems to me like everyone is fondly remembering the good old days when kindly old Mister Wilkins the local land baron would buy your land and pay you double and offer you a nice cup of hot cocoa when you went to his house. Not like these new fangled bots which steal your land and eat your dog and screw your wife all in the wink of an eye.

Let me refresh your memory to three months ago when everyone was complaining about land barons doing the exact same thing that bots are doing now except they were 5 seconds slower.

at least they did it themselves.

Well, to use a cliche I choose to work smarter not harder.

Moaning about it here wont do you any good, try complaining to LL directly if you have a complaint as it would seem they do not react to any 'feedback' posted in these forums.

You always have been, always will be my forumn hero who comes to save me. This just shows what a sweetheart you are. LL needs about 3mil Raymonds.

Don't think I havent. I'm just doing my best to raise awarness all around, and like it or not this new bot screws over everyone. And this is the forumns, there is nothing in forumns but moaning and bitching. Why in fact, I think you just moaned about me moaning.....