1. Copybot can replicate clothing and skins and shapes and textures.
- From what the libSL guys have said, and others seem to have confirmed, the bot does not STORE the clothing, shapes, or textures into inventory.. so after quitting the drone program, the "look" that so many fear will be copied.. is gone. Since the drone cannot DO much of anything on it's own, it can't click "save as" nr can it "give a copy" to anyone on the grid.
So clothing, skins, and shapes are safe.
2. Copybot has already been modified, to ignore !quit.
- An early (2 days ago) attempt was made to exploit the shutdown command that the original author installed in his creation. The problem was that in order to shut it down, you had to IM the phrase "quit" at it. Since the copybot is "just another avatar" as far as SL is concerned, a script was written quickly to IM *EVERYONE* in a 96m radius. The author has since apologized publically for not thinking the consequenses through). NOw.. of course, the bad guys have already adapted to that fix, and Copybot2 no longer can be killed with a !quit IM.
So everyone "protecting themselves" with these is now ONLY annoying legitimate customers, neighbors, and passersby. - (remember that spamming is a violation of the TOS too)
3. Copybot can replicate attachments and may be able to copy objects via UUID.
- I admit, I haven't seen this thing in action personally. but I'd like to. From what I'm given to understand, Copybot will replicate attachments.. MANUALLY. but rezzing prims, copying specs for each prim into the new prim, aligning it and texturing it. again and again and again, until it has built the entire attachment. In terms of some furries, we're talking hundreds of prims. The key is that it must REZ PRIMS one by one, to get the job done. The ONLY element of copybot's behaviour which stores items in inventory.. is this building mechanism.
So wouldn't disabling guest-building on your land, solve this issue?
Oh, of course it's true, that disabling building in a shop would mean that shoppers couldn't rez and open boxes. BUT.. in all honesty, this is FAR LESS annoying to the consumers than closing your shops entirely, or spamming every person within 96m with countless IMs from 30 spambots hidden behind banlines.
A message I received inworld from the original author of the "Simple Copybot Defeater" follows.
Hello,
I'm dropping this because you either obtained, or are being annoyed by, a script I released into the wild earlier this week to deal with the freeware version of CopyBot.
If you're running these, it's time to take them all down. They've outlived their usefulness.
If you delete them and are still receiving the periodic messages to !quit, try clearing your cache (Control-P -> Network -> Clear Cache ) and relogging. The current version of SL occasionally causes object-to-avatar IM queues to become stuck, especially in laggy sims.
If you're still hearing the message after that, you may be picking up another message from a nearby script. If you can locate the object, and it's my unaltered original script, clicking the object should stop it from constantly IMing you.
As I predicted when I gave the script out, it was quickly outmaneuvered as copybot operators discovered a simple workaround.
Rather than attempt to refine the script, I decided to remove it from SLExchange and the forums, and await the technical and policy efforts of the Lindens, which were showing signs of emerging at the time.
Unfortunately, since I did that, two bad things that I didn't properly anticipate have happened.
First, the script I gave away has become WAY too widely used, and is now annoying numbers of folks on The Grid in saturated areas.
Second, after I stopped distributing it, several spammy, laggy, and totally ineffective variations appeared almost immediately, doing things like shouting "!quit" in a tight loop. (The freeware copybot doesn't respond to chat; the command must be IM'd.)
In retrospect, it would've been far better to take a few hours to come up with something a bit friendlier and more controllable...but, like many, I woke up and was shocked by the news that had developed overnight, and thought this might provide a temporary countermeasure.
If you've been inconvenienced by this more than helped, or are being inconvenienced now, I do apologize. Folks are worried right now, and as the calming light of reason sets in (and a policy with some teeth is put in place by the Lindens), this, too, shall pass.
-- ethan cinquetti
I'm dropping this because you either obtained, or are being annoyed by, a script I released into the wild earlier this week to deal with the freeware version of CopyBot.
If you're running these, it's time to take them all down. They've outlived their usefulness.
If you delete them and are still receiving the periodic messages to !quit, try clearing your cache (Control-P -> Network -> Clear Cache ) and relogging. The current version of SL occasionally causes object-to-avatar IM queues to become stuck, especially in laggy sims.
If you're still hearing the message after that, you may be picking up another message from a nearby script. If you can locate the object, and it's my unaltered original script, clicking the object should stop it from constantly IMing you.
As I predicted when I gave the script out, it was quickly outmaneuvered as copybot operators discovered a simple workaround.
Rather than attempt to refine the script, I decided to remove it from SLExchange and the forums, and await the technical and policy efforts of the Lindens, which were showing signs of emerging at the time.
Unfortunately, since I did that, two bad things that I didn't properly anticipate have happened.
First, the script I gave away has become WAY too widely used, and is now annoying numbers of folks on The Grid in saturated areas.
Second, after I stopped distributing it, several spammy, laggy, and totally ineffective variations appeared almost immediately, doing things like shouting "!quit" in a tight loop. (The freeware copybot doesn't respond to chat; the command must be IM'd.)
In retrospect, it would've been far better to take a few hours to come up with something a bit friendlier and more controllable...but, like many, I woke up and was shocked by the news that had developed overnight, and thought this might provide a temporary countermeasure.
If you've been inconvenienced by this more than helped, or are being inconvenienced now, I do apologize. Folks are worried right now, and as the calming light of reason sets in (and a policy with some teeth is put in place by the Lindens), this, too, shall pass.
-- ethan cinquetti
). Members of the build team on the island have had to make some adjustments since then - in particular to scripted objects - but otherwise we're fairly locked down now I think.
