Detecting Viewers

My first post. Yes I am a lurker . In all my years in SL I have never been more offended than I was today when I logged in and found this message. I've been in SL for over 4 years.

xxxxxxx: (Saved Sun Jan 31 10:53:20 2010) __ NEILIFE USER ___
Hello. I'm sorry to disturb you. You were currently on the sim xxxx and you have been detected as a user of Neillife's viewer. However, this viewer is prohibited in Second Life, and of course on our sim. I have therefore to ask you to leave now, we do this to protect our creations because this viewer integrates the function of copybot. I invite you to come back with another viewer. Unfortunately if you come back again with Neillife's viewer I will have to ban you. Thank you for your understanding and I would advise you to don't use Neillife's viewer, you could be in trouble. Thank you. (https://blogs.secondlife.com/community/features/blog/2006/11/15/use-of-copybot-and-similar-tools-a-tos-violation).

I am using the Linden viewer: Second Life 1.23.5 (136262) Oct 14 2009. So my question is how could this happen? The detection thingy is way off course and alot of innocent people could end up banned for no reason. And I will not be returning to this sim. I'm not a builder nor a seller of anything in SL. But I don't want to be labeled as a rip off person. I just feel weird right now. But I guess we all at one time or another feel this way in SL.

I would send them a note explaining the situation. They may not be aware they are getting false alerts.

I did that very thing Brenda. Just makes me angry to be accused I suppose.

That reminds me that I was recently apparently registered (with location) in a database over suspected content thieves, for having the nerve to rez what I had bought.
That triggered an AR for defamation and invasion of privacy. I am all for protecting intellectual property, but I will not let myself and common consumer rights be trampled like that.

I doubt that an AR could achieve anything in those cases, Tali. The database will be external and, therefore, nothing to do with LL. It's unfortunate that there are such idiots about but there are. I'd think that the best that an AR could achieve is have the person warned for harrassment (public statements that the item made about you).

I hear you loud and clear. I'm all for protecting your creations but not by insulting a potential consumer.

I don't understand how this NeilLife Detector thing is supposed to work.

Apart from the special case of Cryolife, as I understand it, the only way the ordinary user can identify a viewer is if the viewer in question supports (and broadcasts) client tags, and if the user hasn't chosen to spoof the tag, which is easily done. Lindens may well have additional tools at their disposal, of course.

But if the viewer doesn't broadcast a client tag, it comes up as "unknown" on the Emerald (or other) client identification list.

No one but a complete nincompoop would script something that concludes "unidentifiable viewer == NeilLife" because, since the regular LL viewer doesn't support client tags, that shows up as unknown, too, as http://modularsystems.sl/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=24&Itemid=16 explains. And Emerald will show up as "unknown" if, for whatever reason, the person using it has turned clothing layer protection off.

I have a horrible feeling, though, that's what the sim owner in question has done (or, more likely, paid for). Quite simply, relying on someone's client tag as a reliable indicator of what they're using is about as sensible as just asking people, trusting them to tell you the truth, and concluding that if they don't answer they must be using something they want to hide.

I would suggest drawing this to the sim owner's attention and suggesting that he or she have a word with the scripter.

It's the replacement for !Quit! obviously - a non-useful and customer-base damaging nincompoop's method of "protecting" their wares.

/thread?

I mean... isn't that your answer right there? They're complete nincompoops.

Number one rule of software coders is that they don't understand anything else about the universe but their own code... They tend to be especially dense on usage, and often on integrating their code with that of other similar things meant to work together.