Have you lost money to a landbot?

caveat emp·tor (ĕmp'tôr') pronunciation
n.

The axiom or principle in commerce that the buyer alone is responsible for assessing the quality of a purchase before buying.

[From Latin caveat ēmptor, let the buyer beware : caveat, third person sing. present subjunctive of cavēre, to beware + ēmptor, buyer.]

I voted No. I've sold one parcel of land, and thanks to all the discussions here I knew what to do and how to do it. On Bots in general I am ambivalent. As far as LandBots go I am not a fan of how they give unfair advantage to their owners, and exploit peoples mistakes. Some owners seem to be willing to do the right thing, some don't. Whether they are illegal per the TROS, i have no idea, I don't know what is legal anymore it seems to change. But if they were regulated better, I wouldn't complain. Maybe there can be some sort of licensing propgram, alts to be used in Real Estate dealings as bots have to be registered and a small feel charged upon sign up, I don't know.

"Ambivalrnt" n. from the latin Am bival rant. Defined as: The inability to care, rant or spell until you've had your morning coffee.

You are just too quick for me , Figgie.

So you think that deliberately trying to trick someone is morally acceptable because of a Latin phrase?

Remind me never to buy anything from you.

Phew. I was worried you were going to report me for a TROS violation: Thread Response Overtly Sarcastic.

Raymond Figtree said "wifebot" and i about fell out of my chair with laughter! thanks. that was funny right thar!

I have no items for sale.

But if you don't care enough to look out for yourself and to take responsibility for your purchases, why should I care if someone else cheats you. In your example, the wood is clearly marked for 50gp. If someone does not take the time to check what they are buying, it is their own fault if they over pay.


That is what this whole discussion is about, careless people not taking responsibility for the actions they take.

And until the progressive nanny state was foisted upon us, it was much more than a Latin phrase.

The bottom line is that theft, trickery and fraud are morally reprehensible. You don't seem to grasp this point. Yes, one should take precautions against the wrong-doing of others. But stealing an unlocked car is still stealing, and the person who does it is still a thief. And deliberately tricking someone out of money is just as bad.

Who is being tricked? In your example the wood is clearly marked. In SL, the land is placed for sale to ANYONE. If you don't want anyone to buy it, don't mark that option. Before you hit the sell now button, check the price you have listed, it isn't very hard.

This debate has raged for months now. Here's a thread where the same point kept getting beaten to death:
/327/01/185904/1.html

I see both sides. What the bot runner is doing is wrong and despicable even if he is entitled to buy land set at the wrong price or mistakenly to "anyone". And the person who set his land to "anyone" is at fault too even though they did not know better and don't deserve to have someone take what was not meant for them.

It's a flawed system and someone is exploiting the flaws. I'd rather talk solutions and education instead of arguing.

The closest thing I can think of is a web-store that lists an item for a price that is clearly not the proper price for the item.

http://www.google.com/search?q=store%20%22incorrect%20price%22 comes up with no shortage of policies similar to this one (happened to be the first result):
So whether the order was confirmed, or indeed already charged, makes no difference, in RL the seller still has (or claims to have) the right to revoke the sale at any point, including after payment.

I found a few actual "high profile" examples where things went wrong (Amazon, Dell) and all of them ended in favour of the seller, despite claims of buyers to sue.

Landbots don't even really compare to buying something for the wrong price either, they purposefully prey on mistakes. A consumer might have a case if they believed it was a genuine offer, but someone who runs an automated tool precisely to captitalize on mistakes isn't going to have much of a chance since it's quite clear that they're 100% aware that the item was clearly underpriced and sought to take advantage.

Agree, Raymond. This landbot issue has become a proxy for the issue of individual responsibility, and it is not really a good proxy for that philosophical debate, and that is why it is kept going endlessly. The system is indeed flawed: The interface for land sellers (who are placed at far greaqter risk than the buyers by it) is flawed, and it is LL that has the responsiblity to fix it. The Residents' responsibility is to get after them to do that.

I say the fixes for 90%+ of the problem are ridiculously easy for LL to put in place:

- Warn new sellers in the About Land notecards, the Knowledge Base, and other appropriate places about landbots, making it clear it is their responsibility as sellers to protect themselves.

- Make sell-to-a-person or sell-to-yourself the default option, not sell-to-anyone.

- Insert a pop-up outlining the terms the seller has set up asking him if this is really what he wants to do before placing it on sale, as a final defense against inadvertent errors or SL bugs like the notorious price-reset.

- Perhaps add a short delay, like five minutes, as an additional fail-safe.

I am sure all this could be done by one fairly junior programmer in about 1% of the time it takes them to read through all this arguing over something that should have been fixed months ago. Fixing something like this is called running a business properly.

Oh, and restore a General Discussions forum, where the endless debates about individual responsibility can go. They are i mportant too; they just get in the way of fixing this problem.

No one is being tricked. Someone simply made a mistake. Not a case of being careless, as you seem to be fixed on. A mistake..........you goofed, you simply overlooked something important. Happens to everyone...........well, obviously, not you. And there is no way to correct that mistake........that is the problem. No way to fix a mistake. It's just tough beans........you're SOL. And the landbot runners know this.....they capitalize on it. And Linden Labs set up the system that makes such exploitation possible.

The selling of a car is probably not a good example.....especially if you are selling to a specific individual. In RL you don't have to let anyone else in the world know about the sale........no danger of some stranger snatching the car away before all details are correct and in order. Not so in SL. You must set the land for sale publically..........and there lies the problem. Once it is set, anyone can pounce in it...........and an automated system that constantly listens for land set at or below a certain threshold and reacts instantly is an exploit waiting for innonence mistakes.

And I've asked twice for where these "simple instructions" are.........care to direct me to them? What's crystal clear to you or me is not necessarily so clear to others. Oh..........but that's concidered "ignorance". Now stupid of me to forget that.

Silly me. I forgot everyone on this planet moved into the "United States of Nothing-is-Ever-My-Fault".

Peggy, I don't see how it could get much more simple than it already is. As for mistakes, when you are dealing with money, you learn not to make them. But if we are talking mistakes, how many mistakes should a surgeon be allowed? an airline pilot? the guy fixing the brakes on your car? after all they are only human, wouldn't a little mistake be ok? a big mistake? Mistakes can be stopped before they happen.

Gosh <insert_name_here>!
Yes I see what you mean, but why haven't you said that before?


Note: This posting is generated by Beta Version 1.0 of the Last-Word forumbot running in conciliatory mode.

There is absolutely no mention in the land selling interface of bots. There should be if they are allowed.

That's because they take their time and verify everything when they sell land.

As should everyone. However, the magnitude of the "punishment" obviously grossly exceeds the magnitude of the error. "What?! You didn't dot the i in your name on your English paper?! US$600, please." The real problem is not moralistic, it is practical: The land-seller interface created by LL makes it far too easy to make a small-seeming and easily overlooked but extremely costly mistake, and any service company with an ounce of brains ought to fixsomething like that, pronto. the real mistake is LL's.

The thing is land system has many flaws and in long run who truly profits is Linden Labs. I often wonder sometimes since I have been here certain key members of LL has part of it. but perhaps its my own paranoia. There is money to made by Land for those who can do it but most people like myself inevitably will make mistakes or lose any investment with LL the one who is head in long run. Though I have confessed there been few times I have intentionally taken a loss to maniplate the landbots when I made land mistake. I won't buy any more land at this point. The only real way to change system that currently is going on is when people get fed up enough quit land trading all together that LL will try to do something about because their profits are dependant on this. Yet as Prim Addict I know how hard it is to just say "No more land" Truthfully I have grown incredibly frusterated and bit down on how land in SL is. Land for me is mere canvas and experimental place that I can create, learn, share and teach others but for many its source of greed. The isolation, learning curve, the shallowness, greed and unethicalness in SL has sort of made me think perhaps any investment I have made may have been mistake but it was my mistake to be made and I am responsible for this. It just now what do I want to do next or can do next is real question

The title of this poll is... oddly chosen. No one loses money to landbots, since they PAY money. They wouldn't be able to get any land without paying for it. And they pay exactly the amount the seller asked for. The question should rather be "Did you ever price your land wrong and had it bought by a bot before you were able to correct your mistake?".

Paranoia . . . may be more realistic than we might think.

How about the extortionist 16m land plots with horrible signs on them?

LL is inviting one of THOSE guys to wine and dine him on an expense-paid trip to San Francisco as part of SL Views - the group where LL picks who they like to come and help them shape SL and its policies.

You'd think they wouldn't promote that sort of thing either, but they actually reward it, by giving them things the rest of us don't get, and using OUR money to do it.

coco

don't use logic Alester! they are blowing off steam. Whenever I point out the illogical semantics in similar instances it gets ignored as THEY know what they mean hehe!