Electric Sheep Company's Searchbot Answers Go Here.

That's perfectly valid as well, but we have to recognize that Linden Lab markets Second Life in many ways to many people. A large part of their effort is in the sense of, "we're making the 3-D web" or "I'm building a country" mentality.

People already have land based tools to restrict avatar entry; ban by avatar, only allow people, only allow group. On top of that, the bot is only scanning for items explicitly set for public sale. If people really want privacy on their land (which, as we all know, doesn't really exist in SL without a private island), then SL doesn't currently feature the toolset to make this possible.

Petitioning for that toolset from Linden Lab to make this possible would make a lot more sense than trying to stop the inevitable indexing of information, in my opinion.

Regards,

-Flip

Agreed. It never hurts to ask. and if those tools can be implemented without adversely affecting the majority of users, hopefully they would be considered.

Correction. We don't know that at all.

All we know is that the bot doesn't automatically publish all your items without your permission; only those you have set for sale.

In fact, I believe the bot scans for ALL items. It is certainly capable of that, because you can opt in to have it publish all your items, for sale or not.

I have consistently and repeatedly - for what, a month now? - asked ESC for clarification as to whether:

(a) it automatically scans all items, or

(b) scans all items for a particular avatar only when that avatar requests it, and

(c) if the case is (a), does that data remain in their database, and

(d) if so, what do they plan to use that data for, such as amassing market statistics for their corporate clients, and/or selling it as is to clients.

The questions (a) through (c) are simple and direct questions about how the code works.

ESC has still not answered them.

coco

Except of course when they're not explicitly set for sale, such as the few bugs that cause items to appear to be marked for sale when the owner of them did no such thing.

Additionally, how does it know when something is for sale? The only way the bot knows something is for sale is *after* scanning it, not before, so by necessity it needs to scan every single thing.

Maybe it doesn't keep any of that other data, maybe it does. The fact that you work in whatever capacity for ESC and feed misinformation on here doesn't help me feel any better about their motives.

For searchbot to function:

It must SCAN everything to read the for-sale flag and owner.

It likely does not STORE data about objects without the for-sale flag,
but likely DOES STORE data about all objects marked for sale, because
filtering out owners on the fly could slow the scan process down significantly.
It's usually more efficient to do it as a follow-up step after data collection.

It LIKELY stores everything with the flag set and then filters out by owner later.
(doing owner lookups on the fly before storing data could really slow the scanning process)

What they store is irrelevant if they never share it with anyone.

You could boil this all down to one question:

What other uses will ESC intend or allow for the object meta-data collected from secondlife, OTHER than what is currently presented via their web-search engine?

(pardon the caps, my formatting options seems to be borked)

Or, you know, they could just answer the questions I posed. And I am interested in them; not just the one question you posed.

coco

Well it might - But when you come to this webside its marketed as a Virtual World - not the 3D web

Sift through the indroductory material on the site.

Try starting here: http://secondlife.com/whatis/


So large numbers of those who sign up think they are getting a "Second Life" complete with virtual land ownership and control over themselves. Theres no mention of crawlerbots, spiderbots, landbots, automated accounts of anykind.

They dont mention a lot of what goes on in Second Life, actually.

Its like trying to sell New York as Mayberry.

Now its fine to say "well we know better- were not noobies" but the new people dont. I would bet money 75% + of Second Life has never heard of this search bot and over half have never heard of land bots.

They might be marketing as you say to some people. They website should include more of their "vision" .

Anyway one of those tools Ive mentioned has been shot down over and over. That would be labelling bots as bots with some sort of account tag. This would at least facilitate a way to ban all bots run by legitimate companies from your land.

That way you wouldnt have to hear about a searchbot first before it wasnt allowed. Plus Bots would count towards your 300 avatar ban limit.

When its one bot - people dont see any use to this. When its 500 bots ina few years, tell me how I ban them? Even from my Private Island?

Not only are we not allowed Privacy and Protections -- I think -- people dont want us even wishing we had any.

Well, I wish you luck with getting them to fess up to their internal operations and practices, most organizations would just lump that into the "none of your business" category, unless, of course, you were a paying customer or a recognized oversight agency with the ability to affect and enforce policy.

We can, however, reasonably and rationally expect an answer to the question I posed because the answer directly affects us.


Colette-

Selling NYC as Mayberry? Hrm... maybe it's more of a "trying to sell the NYNY casino in las vegas as the real new york city".

I would say, the wish for privacy is reasonable, but expectating it is certainly going to lead to disappointment.

So I'm not going through 6 pages of whiny posts to find this out...

Has anyone from ESC actually posted on here with any info?

Only ESC's and LL's opinion are really relevant in this situation and LL's silence gives me a good idea of what THEY think about it...

Anyone? Anyone?

The FBI's cyber mission is four-fold: first and foremost, to stop those behind the most serious computer intrusions and the spread of malicious code; second, to identify and thwart online sexual predators who use the Internet to meet and exploit children and to produce, share, or possess child pornography; third, to counteract operations that target U.S. intellectual property, endangering our national security and competitiveness; and fourth, to dismantle national and transnational organized criminal enterprises engaging in Internet fraud.

http://www.fbi.gov/cyberinvest/cyberhome.htm

I think we can quite reasonably and rationally expect answers to all the questions I posed.

As for it being "none of our business," I could just as easily say (and many people have) that it's none of their business what items I own, and which of them are for sale, and where they are for sale; much less is it any of their business to decide they are going to go ahead and list my sale items on their website, without my prior consent or knowledge, complete with tp's to the spots where the items are.

ESC has spoken of this search as a service for residents. If it is, then they should answer resident questions.

Even if it's not, they should still answer the questions, rather than treat residents as so much chum.

I have yet to hear one rational reason why they should not answer the questions I've collated.

The "none of your business" answer has never proved much of a deterrant to journalists, or to much of anyone, really. It does make for a lot of bad PR, though, to any company which uses it, so it would not behoove them to take that approach.

coco

LL's silence doesn't tell anyone anything about what LL thinks. LL is silent until the moment it drops the hammer, and often even after that.

But that IS THEIR BUSINESS.

Until the rightful owners of the meta-data (Linden Lab) say otherwise.

If you want to demand answers... ask them of Linden Lab.

You know .. you were really wrong when you said you didnt miss anything in that other thread ...

Yes Forsetti responded in the Automated Burglary Thread.

Actually Torley thinks its cool. But that was just a comment on a blog. Theres no offical word.

I can say the same thing for what the Lindens think about Land Bots. Theres a deafing silence on those too.

Thank you for your advice, Rusty, but I'm not interested right now in what LL thinks of the ESC searchbot.

I am interested in what data the searchbot gets, and how they plan to use it.

LL would likely not be able to answer those questions; ESC is the logical entity to pose those questions to.

Their business affects us. They present this searchbot as a service to residents. They can answer resident questions about the searchbot that roams among us, collecting data.

coco

*Wild applause*

When did questioning things become "paranoia??

Who decided that we all must sit tight lipped while certain people attempt to propel forth their individual idealogies?

You who treat people with questions as if they were ignorant and spooked wildebeasts are really the wildebeasts.

WOW COOL THATS NEAT! (IMPACT STUDY SCHMIMPACT STUDY!)

You've already made your displeasure with ESC readily apparent... You've put them on the defensive, and they're going to be very guarded with what they give you, if anything. Why should they give you any answers if doing so will likely only empower you (or others) to vilify them further?

They've likely resigned themselves to remaining silent or stonewalling you indefinitely, in an effort to look out for their own 'best interests'. Or they could lie, and tell you what you want to hear. By the time we found out it would be long past too late to do anything about it.

The forums is where people come to complain and bicker. You think that their silence will galvanize the concerned residents of secondlife against them? Look at some of the recent polls. How many people actually participate in the forums these days, out of the 100,000 or so that have been in-world in the last 48 hours? We're a drop in the bucket. Too many grass-roots movements have tried to start here and failed.

So many people have cried wolf here that no one with any real influence takes the official forums seroiusly.

I keep harping on the LL side because ESC is accountable to them, and, to some degree, LL is accountable to us. Convince LL to pressure ESC for answers. It's likely the only way you'll get them.

Seems to me that for some people on these boards if LL says something contrary to their opinion then they ignore it and claim LL said nothing. I think that LL have actually been quite verbose on the topic of bots in SL. Unfortunately for you they're consistently PRO-bot.



14th November 2006 -
http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/11/14/use-of-copybot-and-similar-tools-a-tos-violation/


20th December 2006 -
http://blog.secondlife.com/2006/12/20/town-hall-with-cory-introductory-transcript/#more-628


9th January 2007
http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/01/09/cory-lindens-town-hall-transcript/#more-683


9th Feb 2007 -
http://secondlife.reuters.com/stories/2007/02/09/linden-sees-further-drop-in-real-estate-prices/

NinjaLand.

LOL.

I'm not quite sure why I'm laughing though...

Yes, well, we shouldn't allow something as useless and impertinent as the FACTS get in the way of a good 1000-2000 post forum argu.. err.. debate.

Thank you - After a couple months of reading they were silent on the issue of bots - and not being aware of anything contrary, I beleived it.

Evidently even though I try to stay informed on Linden Policies, its more difficult than I realized. Linden Policies shouldnt come from snipets of town hall threads and third party news stories, but it definitely seems that is what the deal is.

It looks like I was wrong about thier silent approval of bots.

Instead they are obviously in favor of the bots that have come out.



So the next person scammed by a land bot's owner can thank Linden Labs.

Sorry, Colette, but I don't read these obviously carefully chosen quotes that way at all.

They look to me like LL encouraging innovations in general; the passages quoted actually say very little about bots in particular. For the most part they read like support for LibSL rather than bots per se. The Lindens seem pretty clear about wanting people to find and report bugs and to introduce new things, evidently in the belief that they generally would be good for SL (or at least not bad for it).

About the only direct reference to bots is in the 9 Feb. '07 passage, where LL "declined to say" what it would do about landbots, and at the end of the passage, where a Linden financial officer opines, "For the most part, I think the bot broblem is fixed." "The bot PROBLEM." That is hardly a ringing endorsement of bots. And this from a financial officer, whose expertise would not be expected to be in dealing with bots.

Also, notice that 9 Feb. is BEFORE the ESC spybot had made its appearance, so LL could hardly be commenting about a bot that wasn't out yet and which they might well have been unaware of. Using such passages as a defense of the spybot (and future spybots to come) is therefore invalid. It is only since 9 Feb. that we have been presented with a spybot that enables grifters to victimize unwary Residents and strips away any vestige of privacy, released by a third party company not granted access to LL's database, whose reaction to being told of the problem attacked the victims and now wants to assert that privacy is and must be an impossibility in SL. On 9 Feb., was there anyone outside ESC and maybe its user group that would even have imagined such a phenomenon, let alone frame a policy toward it?

Marshalling all this as a defense of bots means to me their advocates are really scraping the bottom of the barrel in the never-ending search for rationalizations of the spybot and its kin.

We have already seen scores of pages of disingenuous statements by bot advocates, ESC or otherwise; it is very important to look at new ones from these sources with deep skepticism. The spinmeisters are alive and well, and look like they are using everything in their bag of tricks.

If you carefully followed the other thread and the one before that, you'll note that I was scarcely one of those who was "putting them on the defensive." You'll note that I said people should give Forseti a chance to answer things before going off the deep end.

I have hardly "put ESC on the defensive." That gives me tremendous power, don't you think, when I didn't even start those threads? When I was actually working with them in the beginning? When I wanted to be included in this search?

You are trying to turn this into a me versus them thing, when it was never that. I didn't even care about this searchbot as much as others - and still don't.

My displeasure with them has developed largely because they've thus far failed to answer the questions.

I do care, however, about getting reasonable questions answered civilly - enough to collate them, and continue putting them forward for a month. If they refuse to answer questions, then that in itself is an answer, isn't it? And getting answers to questions is my professional job in real life.

Little do I care if an entity is so sensitive that it can't bear to be asked questions. They are either a professional company, and can answer the questions residents have put to them, or they are not. If not, I don't think that would be due to their sensitive feelings as much as their believing what you do - that the concerns of mere residents expressed here on the official forums aren't worth bothering with.

You are wrong - entirely wrong - about the vilifying. It is always better just to come clean about what you are doing in the first place, instead of trying to hide it, or doubletalk it. People can then deal with the reality; like it or not like it; try to stop it, or not try to stop it. Hiding it always makes things much worse than they really are.

It is always worse to withhold what you are doing from people because you fear their reaction, because that also loses you their respect.

As for ESC telling me what I "want to hear," I don't "want to hear" anything. I'm a journalist, with a science background.

In any case, it's not a matter of me against ESC; that is just a tactic to give them an excuse not to answer. These are questions that were brought up in other threads.

Forseti has said they will answer the questions. Why you keep saying we won't get them is hard for me to understand.

coco

You mistake my point.

If the Lindens are for the Unregulared roll out of bots reguardless the application.

Then they are part of the problem.

Now its their Back Yard, so they call the shots. But Residents dont need to be happy about it.

Somewhere there was a quote by Robin, I believe, about how they were trying to figure out what to do about the landbot problem.

I just don't know where it was; maybe someone else does.

coco