Stop Thief!

Please join me in boycotting buying land from the landbot owner who preys on you and your friends, purposely setting his bot to only capture land set mistakenly for really low amounts to "anyone". Once his bot steals the land, he ignores any requests or pleas to sell it back at the price he stole it for. His land sales are easy to spot as he proudly puts his own name on his ill-gotten listings. I can't name him here but he is the worst "Landbaron" since the age of King Arthur and his favorite "Magician".

Also please take every opportunity you can to let LL know your outrage and displeasure that they allow this morally corrupt "wizard" to continue to exploit the system.

The only answer I have gotten so far from LL is that what he is doing is not against the TOS so they will allow it to go on, but that they are "looking into it". This is an unacceptable response.

Some may be ok supporting a company who allows thievery to go on in plain sight. I am not ok with it. Hope you aren't either.

IM me the AV name. I want to know which landbaron this is. Also, what are his bot names? Why not get a rally going where you get as many landowning friends as you can to add him and his bots to their ban list. Eventually he will get the message.

Yeah, who is it?

Hmm, if I recall my Literature, King Arthur's Magician was Merlin the Magician, right?

Note the use of "mistakenly." If Bob incorrectly prices his land and/or fails to or incorrectly designates the person he wants to sell the land to it was Bob's fault. Bob blew it. Bob's lack of advanced technology that will allow him to go back through the fourth-dimension prevents him from undoing his own pricing mistake with his land and he'll have to live with the fact that he failed to double-check everything before clicking sell.



At worst the land baron has taken advantage of Bob's mistake. He's not exploiting the system, just Bob's mistake. Remember, all Bob had to do was double-check what he had set the land for sale/designation.



According to the Terms of Service the Lindens don't get involved in financial disputes between residents: "5.1 You release Linden Lab from your claims relating to other users of Second Life. Linden Lab has the right but not the obligation to resolve disputes between users of Second Life."

Even if we attempt to apply a fraud argument as the land baron didn't manipulate Bob to make a mistake while pricing/designating their land there's no swindle. And Bob did agree to the Terms of Service.

I guess in this situation what I would want is to sign a petition in which Bob must be protected from Bob.

Gotta agree with Elex here, I don't see the theft.

Yeah, your magician guy is just a jerk not a criminal...but "Bob" is an idiot so it evens out.

You are right on all counts, and are showing your usual superior intellect while also showng a lack of caring for the uninitiated. Thank you for taking a snake's side. Are you a defense attorney in RL?

Tons of Bobs make mistakes every day and this guy takes advantage of it. Not all are idiots, Squeezeone. Some just don't know about bots and assume since they are on a sim with no others near that it's safe to set land to anyone. What the bot runner is doing is legal, and still wrong. But I'm sure the Lindens who are following this issue will be pleased to note that some folks are as fine with it as LL is.

The "it's not illegal so it must be ok" reasoning will soon result in all of us swimming to our homes when the ice caps finish melting. I weep for humankind.

*makes note to go easy on the caffeine tomorrow.

Not really.

Players using landbots bypass the GUI and aren't subject to the same search limitations as human users.

It's called cheating. Just because LL doesn't have a specific rule against it doesn't mean it is ok to cheat and steal.

Bob wants to sell his car and buys a little black, white and red "for sale" sign from Home Depot. Gets to his car to put the price on it but finds his Sharpie pen is all dried out so he tosses the sign up on the dash board and hurries to the good old Office Depot down the street to get a new one. Parks in front of Office Depot, jumps out leaving the keys in the car to get a new Sharpie........he'll only be a minute or two (in and out). Comes out to find his car gone.

Joe Car Buyer was looking for a car for sale. He sees the car with a for sale sign on the dash and no amount!! Wow, just what he wanted, a car for free with the keys in it......must be legal so he takes it.

Bob made a mistake. Joe benefited. What's "illegal"?

Stupid Bob is at fault of course............Joe did nothing wrong.

Get real, people...............A landbot taking property like what happens in SL all the time is criminal. Shine it anyway you want.......it's still sh**.!!!

Agree with the shine comment above.

I think it's theft, and it's cheating.

coco

After Bob blows the transaction no one within a zillion-mile radius is required to take an empathy test to determine how deeply they feel about what happened to Bob. Bob inflicted Bob on Bob. There's no pre-printed Hallmark sentiment to send off to Bob reading, "Dear Bob, Deepest condolences for your loss (of the ability to read the confirmation window when setting land for sale)." There's not going to be a hug train chugging around SL.



Bob actually had an opportunity to prevent his mistake. After clicking the sell land button Bob was presented with a window which allowed him to 1) Set the parcel price 2) Select a name, if any, for the parcel to be sold to, and 3) select whether or not he wants to sell the objects with the land. After filling in those three things Bob clicks the Sell button and is presented with a window asking "Are you sure you want to sell this parcel to <blank> for L$<amount>" with the choice to either cancel or confirm the transaction.

So... Bob proceeds to blow the transaction. He first fails to double-check what he's plugged into the three areas of the form. He then fails to read what's presented to him on the confirmation window. Bob's had two opportunities to correct the error. If we add a third confirmation ("Are you really really sure you want to do this?", as Bob skipped willy nilly through the form and the first confirmation, he has another chance to catch his mistake. The problem is, even if this extra confirmation-of-the-confirmation window was there, and caught 99 out of every 100 Bobs, various Bobs will still slip through.

And there's the rub: No one can make Bob read and double-check. No can make Bob, if afforded the opportunity, triple-check.

The liability rests with Bob, not the landbot and not the owner of the landbot. And it has nothing to do with morality or cheating. The best argument to make wouldn't be to single out a single landbot owner, but all as a class on the basis of overuse of server resources (to conduct the various searches). This requires a clear definition of overuse and there will still be landbot owners who stay below the guidelines.

Spoken how it truely is. The only reason why its ok per TOS is because LL doesn't want to police the grid.

Yes Bob gets what he deserves. But even if everyone triplechecked and did not make the same mistake, LandB---n Mer--n would still be able to make a killing on the poor folks who don't come to this site and waste time reading warning threads like this. They intentionally set the land way below market and are guilty of being ignorant (and yes a bit lazy) and think it's ok to set the land to "anyone" when doing a person to person deal, not realizing that before the person standing next to them can buy the plot they just listed, a bot can tp to the sim and do its automated dirty work.

I single out this single bot runner because he is the single bot runner with no qualms about preying on those that make mistakes and the only one who never returns IMs or land.

If one Bob reading this sees the potential danger and saves his land, all this aggrevation would be worth it.

Congratulations, E. You get to be right again. I hope it makes you as happy as M-----n is when he makes off with something that does not belong to him. Even if he is entitled to it according to you and LL.

If that's specifically where the problem lies then the attempt for a solution is a proposal that to set a parcel to Anyone the seller has to pop open the Select window and type in "Anyone."

Yep that is the problem and that is a great solution, since if it's as hard to set to anyone as it is to select a specific avatar, a ton less people will select anyone when they dont mean to sell it to anyone, but just figure there's no harm to doing it and so they do it and get burned.

I like it when you use you brain for good instead of...ah I won't say it, since you are being so constructive and not kicking poor Bob when he's down anymore.

Peace and slow and safe land transactions to us all.

Exactly. Anyone got a JIRA proposal going for this?

Regardless of whether or not poor 'Bob' is too dumb to own land, remember that there are a lot of people in world who are not the most skilled with the English language. Would people be more sympathetic to the plight of 'Roberto' in Brazil who speaks English as a third language than they would be to 'Bob' in the U.S.?

Many non-native English speakers miss the lovely discussions about landbots and happily float along through SL until the day when they lose their land to a landbot, because they are accustomed to hitting the confirmation buttons without reading/translating them, and they think there is no harm in setting the land for sale to anyone when they are the only one present in the sim.

Oh BTW, someone somewhere said that the landbaron in question is actually a woman.

I'm fairly ambivalent to the contents of this thread except for the two accusations that using bots is cheating. This isn't WoW, this isn't a game, this is a business platform, there's no such thing as cheating. If I write a program to scan eBay for cheap things, automatically buy them and set them back for sale at a higher price that's not cheating. It's a cunning business model.

In the real world there's no such thing as cheating, there is however such a thing as committing a crime. Some land flipping activities (with or without bots) might fall under this category in your jurisdiction.

You already have to consciously and deliberately select Anyone. You have to select it from a drop down box. You HAVE to deliberately skip over the first choice which is Specific user and go down to Anyone instead.

The real problem is that the only way to transfer land from one person to another is to sell it to them for a nominal amount. What would help in this area is a button you can use to transfer land in and out of groups. Really though, the thing that would help the most is a bit of common sense.

Unless you are from another country, like Annabelle stated above. but it's not that big of a deal...

BTW, rumor has it that you are actually a short fat bald guy with a beret.

In RL it works the same as well. Mistype the limit or amount of shares you want to purchase and sell and nobody would cover for the losses except yourself.

As with most laws and regulations there is one clause in common - ignorance is no excuse. Especially when it comes to anything of value.

So little to no sympathy from me, especially since you can select whom you want to sell to - see the FAQs regarding that topic.

I suspect you would when you double checked the block was $4400k then found $44k spent buying it.

I don't like the use of Bots, I think they give an unfair advantage. But they are not illegal according to the TOS. Yes Bob was careless, and he paid for it dearly. Technically and unfortunately, he isn't entitled to any recourse or sympathy, although it would be nice to receive both.. It is obvious that there are people here who see this as strictly money making opportunity, and among those people are upstanding business people and unscrupulous scumbags. So you have to take the same cautions here as you would in RL. I recently sold a parcel of land, to a specific individual, and I double and triple checked the entries before click OK. Perhaps those who are against the use of bots can pool their knowledge, and educate as many as possible to the precautions needed to prevent being swindled whether it is through ignorance or theivery. Perhaps an inworld Bot awareness campaign, hand out notecards, whatever. But I firmly beleive that we can expect no help from the providers on most social issues (which is fine by me) so the resdents have to do whatever they can to shape SL into a place all can co-exist in. My #1 rule is to throw aout any notion that there is any enlightened value system here. All off RL's evils, Greed, Prejudice,Selfishness, Arrogance, and Pettiness have arrived withe the SL babyboom. My upbringing has made me a jaded and cynical person, and think those qualities will be of use to me here.

That's a different issue, that's deception.

Doesn't always work that way, not in the UK anyway. There are cooling off periods for many purchases. A cooling off period would have prevented the situation the OP found himself in. However I'm not sure it would be popular all round if it slowed up purchases or people found themselves being messed around (it would have to work both ways for it to be viable).