LL seem to be taking action against landbots...

Hi

It seems LL are taking action against landbots under the terms of service by broadly interpreting the clause about 'scripted objects that intentionally slow server performance or inhibit other Resident's ability to enjoy Second Life'. I know this because I've got caught in this action - I run the site http://www.sllandlist.com some of you may know and they've suspended the (one) alt I use to gather info for this site for 3 days on grounds of 'Improper use of system resources (land sales searches)'. This is a pain in the neck as far as I'm concerned but hopefully the situation can be remedied. However I can only applaud the general thrust of this action assuming it is being universally applied, as it will wipe landbots off the grid.

You've got one of the few bots I don't mind too much.. Dunno who, if anybody, you've talked to about this but you might want to drop by Torley or somebody's place during their office hours and ask about how to get this resolved in a way that keeps your site going. Best of luck!

Yes, I was surprised to find a 512 priced at 5120 the other day!!

So yeah, I jumped on it, as it was adjacent to some other land I have.

Max

I thought your website was updated every 2 hours or something crazy? Or were you searching every 4 seconds?

Hi Elanthius

Yeah it is updated every 2 hours, but I need to scan all land available for sale which is 25000 plots so that's 250 land searches every 2 hours plus various other interactions with the server to get additional information. Not sure how low the bar is LL have put but that is quite low - it may be measured over a longer period e.g. a week. That's what I would do - you'll rapidly distinguish between automatic scanners and users manually searching that way. In any case this will blow the landbots out of the water. They're not really staying within what is said by the Terms of Service though in my case in terms of intentionally overburdening the server or reducing other users enjoyment. But I'll be happy if I can negotiate a return with them and the landbots are kept out.

Iv learned from experance you dont negotiate with Linden Labs, unless its with the CEO.
Its not something they do, even if they do, the next linden of power will over turn it when there bored.

I know i lost all respect for LL a while ago, they are a company that I would avoid doing business with.

Iv seen some emails my self, threatened some, but I am not expecting a response. It would be to business like to respond with the actual rules, in a way that would be helpful because that would mean we actually know something and wouldnt have to step blindly.

The biggest reason why thay wont give us written rules, is to cause stuff like this, if thay remain as vage as possable, then they can define anything and everything they want as breaking the rules, because we dont know what the rules actually contain.

Its a BS to have to work with a company that runs on "you forfit all if you break the rules, and the rules are unwritten, goodnight."

Is there any reason to think this is happening to anyone else?

It's entirely possible this is isolated, possiby based on ARs from someone that objects to the land search site.

I think it has happened to them all.

I can tell you right now its not based on AR's, my back end system was banned as well, no one exempt LL would have known what bots make up that, they where not seen or heard, yet they suffered a ban.

I count 7 entries for improper use of resources in the police blotter. The blotta only covers 2 days, though - could be more.

Most of the bots banned where not done so with a notice, so id assume that they wouldn't show up on the police blotter, id expect the actual number to be around 25 or so maybe more.

But your site seems current, I can pull up a listing from today.

That's because (I should change this) on sale times are given as GMT and the scanning alt was banned about 24 hours ago, that was the time of the last successful scan.

I see, thanks for the explanation Christian. I'm sorry that your helpful system got hit, but if the landbots got taken out too I'm thrilled.

Any update on this? Hey land brokers: are the bots active or banned?

well if the storm of noise about this issue is accurate id say landbots do exactly this

nothing personal, and im sorry your getting gom-ed but im also sorry for everyone who got scalped for wanting a little chunk of land

its a touchy subject to say the least

It's about time they shut them down. I do hate them so much.

A few days ago I saw how a landbot bought up land for a very cheap price, 3500 linden for a 512 parcel. The lady in question realised her mistake, she told me she was disgraphic, she was also new to SL and wanted to list that land for 35000 instead of 3500.

One of the non stealing bots bought that parcel, she got her land back but the above example shows what a plague landbots are. I even read a huge thread about them on a foreign SL forum today. Landbots do not bring good things to SL, they are runned by a few people who want to fill their pockets.

More and more landbots have been brought into SL over the last few weeks, I think about 14 different avatars in total. The overflow must have caused LL to act against them.

Who in their right mind would buy 512sqm for 35k had it been priced as she intended? There are quite a few new sims where prices are way lower than that.

I am pleased that at long last LL have done something about land bots. I really want them to ban the Electric Sheep item bot next but won't be holding my breath.
;

We should not enjoy the pain of the landbot owners too much. Linden Lab could have issued a blog post giving people that have bots connected to their avatars time to disable them instead of sneakily banning these avatars and more than likely causing a financial crisis for these residents. The same as they should have done for the alt ban last week. (Remembers the 'cobybot is good/copybot is evil switcheroo).

There are many posts from LL saying bots were not illegal and there was nothing they could do about them - and now this 'secret attack' (if, in fact, this is what has happened). I am happy to see the bots go. I am not happy about the way Linden Lab went about removing them.

Just FYI - no, they have not stopped the landbots. I just now saw someone lose land to our favorite "landbaron", who doesn't give back pricing mistakes, and I had a chat with one of his lackies, who confirmed with me that they are still fully operational and still not giving back land when someone makes a mistake. At least he was kind enough to show up and explain the situation to the distraught landowner. Not that that's any consolation to her. But then again, I think the real reason he showed up was to manually price the land for sale.

The woman who lost the land made a mistake - she isn't a native English speaker, and she thought she had set the land for sale to herself. Heck, when I showed up to see if a bot would take it before I could buy it and give it back, she thought that I had bought it, and didn't even know what a bot was or that it could buy the lot without being on the lot.

Just sad. At least it was only a small plot of land, but if she wants it back, she has to pay over $1,000. I advised her to file a complaint with LL, but really, what are they gonna do about it? They allow this to happen over and over and over again.

The police blotter said 3-day suspension.. I wonder if that's expired.

If so, /me hopes for a bigger suspension on the next round.

The really funny part is, I was told that the bot named after a famous wizard wasn't hit with the ban at all. So I guess the worst offender gets off the hook for some reason. Perhaps an oversight or something more sinister?

It might have been only the Original Poster banned and possibly a couple others- And all the rest was just speculation.

The one bot that needed to be banned wasn't. This totally sucks, but why am I surprised? LL does it again.

No kidding. Does LL read these forums and see these sick things happening??