New Bot: The Estate Owners Fight Back!

Today, myself and several other estate owners, representing over 100 sims, decided to take steps to protect ourselves from the latest bot, that scans objects for sale at low prices on sims and publishes that data, along with the owner's name and teleport coordinates on the Electric Sheep website.

Multiple prims bearing the name and description of high-ticket and the most popular goods in sl are being placed throughout our sims with random low prices. Some thought has also gone into the location of these prims too

Other measures include scanning the website concerned for items in our sims, and blocking public access (where this can be done) once any items appear. The measures employed will be reviewed on a continuing basis.

Once the site gets a reputation for displaying high-quality goods for sale that are in fact a base prim or prims, of no value, and / or finding that the sims containing the items are blocked to public access, well I'll leave you to imagine the consequences. I hope others follow our example in leading the fight against this bot, which, apparently, was born out of the same code factory that brought us CopyBot.

Rock

hmm, sounds like fraud.

You could also just opt out.

Umm, all you have to do is to estate ban Grid Shepherd.

By doing this, you could be interpreted as damaging, or even libelling, the makers of the goods whose names you are copying (because somebody could find your sim via the Sheep tracker, buy the cheap mislabeled object thinking it's the real thing, and then go around warning lots of other potential customers not to buy the product, thus damaging the real product's reputation and the real person's business)

Do pages of porn results stop people using google?
Do incorrect translations stop people using babelfish?

Save yourself the bother, ban Grid Shepherd from your sims and go opt out. If ESCs version becomes the most popular, at least you have those options. Others will probably follow that don't give the option.

It scans all objects, regardless of price. You're making it sound like the sheepbot was explicitly designed to screw people over. Depsite your bad experience with it, I haven't seen anything that makes me think that that was their intention.

ESC messed up the beta of the sheepbot and should have acted right away to shut it down when they heard that it was causing problems and being abused. Very few people disagree with that. Instead of working to harm ESC, maybe you and your sim-owner-friends could spend your energies contacting them and making it clear that they're doing more harm than good with their search stuff.

You're just escalating the arms race against bots. If you don't like the idea of bots, you should leave SL - LL has made it very clear that they are here to stay.

*laughs* If I hadn't already opted out with every alt I own, I'd be tempted to join in this bit of creative sabotage, placing the decoy prims deep under water on the edge of my parcel, with sharks swimming around it! Want to place one or two for me? I'll have to let you into my land group long enough to rez the prims, as anything else gets auto-returned.

The original poster's method targets those people who are looking to profit from other people's mistakes. Honest people would not expect to bot a L$10,000 sexgen bed for L$10.

Will estate banning the bot prevent it from standing just across the sim border and scanning anyway? No. You can't keep this bot from scanning your sims unless you limit access to the sim to members of a specific group, and take it off the map for all other users. Individuals can opt out, but sim owners can not protect their residents with bans.

*boggle* Do you really mean that, Ceera?

Seriously - how would you feel if somebody new searched for a texture on the Sheep search engine, found a "TRU Ultimate Texture Pack" there, travelled to the sim, saw it was a bare textured box (but that could be intended, remember we are talking about a new user here) and bought it.. found it was empty.. and then went to every welcome area and social place they could find and shouted to the rooftops to avoid TRU because they sell you bogus empty prims?

Since Second Life is almost lawless, fighting fire with fire, though it may not be mature, might be a good way to pressure Linden Labs into taking some sort of action.

However, I share Yumi's concern about misappropriating the names of others' products. I hope you get permission from the creators of those products first to use their products' names in this manner. This whole search-bot thing isn't their fault.

A few pointy questions, such as, where did you buy it? and can you rez for us teh object that you actually purchased so we can see who made it? and how much did you pay for that object?

Those should quickly establish whether or not it is a genuine valid claim. Bear in mind that anyone coudl make those allegations even before this scanbot, and those pointy quyestions existed even then to establish whether the person was to be taken seriously.

It would not have been sold at a TRU store or from an authorized TRU catalog vendor. It would not have been offered at anything resembling a realistic price. I have no more liability for that than some yard sale person selling an empty prim with a misleading name on it. (And incidentally, I don't own any part of TRU. I just sell my textures there, like any merchant at a mall.)

We are talking about people clearly trying to get something expensive for next to nothing. Someone wants to complain? My reply in your case would be simple.

"What did you see when you bought this so-called merchandise? A plain, untextured prim? TRU has never had sold ANYTHING in a plain untextured prim. Nor do we sell anything in boxes placed in random locations. We only sell from our vendors at our store and from our catalog vendor system. And the price was what? L$3 for what was supposed to be lots of textures? You expected that to be real, when a typical bundle of 10 textures sells for between 300 and 500 L$? If you have a problem, it isn't with TRU. It's with your own perception that it's OK to but somethng valuable for a fraction of what it is worth. Here's your L$3, cheerfully refunded even though I wasn't the person who misled you. Your complaint has as much validity as complaining to Sony that the widescreen TV box that you bought off the tailgate of someone's pickup truck for $50 was filled with bricks when you got it home and opened it, and not a $5,000 TV set."

Fraud? Are you serious? Who is being defrauded pray? Do you really think that the maker of a famous bed in Sl, costing up to L$14,000 will lose one sale because some clever dick thinks it is smart to tp into my sim to pick up one at L$0, courtesy of the Electric Sheep Bot?

It is my Estate, and I will put what I like on it. I will name prims on my Estate anything I like. People have pointed to the CS and TOS being deficient in preventing Bots from roaming my sim, without my permission, gathering data on my possessions, without my permission, and posting my name on a website, without my permission. Point me to the part where it says I cannot name prims what I like. Until then..

As for opting out, I did not opt in to anything, and I am not going to make a journey to opt out of any or every new scheme these bot owners come up with.

They can just opt out of my Estate.

As for putting a named avatar that this bot masquerades as, on a banned list, do you really think that they have only one, or cannot easily generate more? A ban list does not prevent a bot from scanning from a neighboring sim either, 512m is their range, according to the scripting forum.

They messed with the wrong guy when they messed with me.

Rubbish! LL made it very clear that CopyBot was NOT here to stay, so get your facts right.

If Bot owners do not like Estate Owners, they should leave SL. LL has made it very clear that Estate Owners are here to stay. I pay US$1675 for EACH of my sims, what did it cost Electric Sheep to put Shepherd Bot inworld? I know who's side LL will come down on in this.

All these apologists for the LandBot, CopyBot, ShepherdBot, and WhatsnextBot, are the ones who should leave SL.

Ah, but I'm not talking about them complaining to you. I'm talking about them going and telling their friends, and then their friends telling their friends, and then their friends telling their friends, etc... that TRU has untrustworthy vendor boxes out there in the world.

Yes, it wasn't in a TRU store, yes it wasn't owned by a TRU member.. but maybe the person who starts the meme is new, and doesn't realise the importance of that. Once it starts getting passed on, probably nobody will check validity - and if they do then maybe they'll find one of the other "TRU Ultimate Texture Packs" for L$5, in which case, it's confirmed... It's the exact same problem as the "you get banned from a parcel for some silly reason, but others who see the ban or the next buyer of the plot don't know the reason and thus don't know it was silly, so they think you are a griefer and you get banned from other places too"

In the real world, trademark law is absolute. You can't, for example, make a PC, put the Alienware head logo on it, and then put the words "This is not an Alienware PC" underneath it. You might say that any intelligent person would realise that the resulting PC wasn't made by Alienware, but the law doesn't allow you to leave Alienware in the position of hoping that every single person who sees that PC is not stupid or otherwise their brand will be damaged.

This is interesting.

The thing is they didnt consent to being put on the web site in the first place.

So someone using the website to get at these bargians is using information provided via the spybot that none of the owners ever wanted the spybot to gather.

So at that point, is it fraud?

Gets a little stickier cuase they know they will end up on the bot's search.

Why should someone get accused of a false advertizing style fraud when they never consented to advertize?




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One other thing -

People shouldnt have to opt-out of the spybot. But if you do opt out - that opt out should mean you never get scanned again either.

Well... ok. Why don't you take the risk, then?

Put some prims called "Electric Sheep Co. Easy Building Kit" up for sale for L$15 in your sims. Sheep will know about it instantly, since it's their scanner, and they're a real company with real trademarks who can sue... but if as you claim, you're not doing anything wrong, then you've nothing to worry about, right?

My facts are right - try actually reading what I wrote instead of jumping to conclusions.


They will come down, as they have in the past, on the side of open source. That means bots. You not liking this answer doesn't make it less real.

Did you actually bother to check that?

You could also argue Yumi that someone seeing a sexgen bed on the Electric Sheep website for L$10, and telling all their friends about it, is also damaging to the Creator's business. Designer Clothes manafucturers have taken retailers to court for selling below the price that they deem maintains their cachet, and demeans their product.

I bought some very expensive pianos and harps recently to furnish my tenant homes. The creator gave me bulk discount, but was very concerned that if I should leave SL the last thing she ever hoped to see, was her products at a knockdown price in a yardsale. I assured her that I would not do that.

Rather than try to second-guess the reactions of the creators of high-ticket items, why not ask them instead?

And don't forget, in order to find the objects that are for sale, the bot has to click on every prim. they can get the same information that a 'real' avatar can get from doing a right-click, Edit, only very much faster. It could click the ground and determine who the parcel owner is, it could then completely audit all your possessions in your parcel, and link that info to all your possessions elsewhere, and all your landholdings, and store al the details about your buying habits, the kinds of things you buy, detail all those naughty poseballs and other 'devices' you might own (I am not saying that YOU do Yumi, just that it could if you did).

Right now, they are providing information about things for sale. Who will determine what they do with all the information they have? Who will stop them if they decide to list all your possessions in sl? Or the possessions owned by someone else, but at the same location? You don't think that it could be commercial concerns that determine what they decide to do with the data they collect, do you? Or if they decide to go back for more data when an idea occurs to them?

Even if they have scruples in this company, do you not think that any success they have may not be replicated by others, with less scruples.

The time to act is now.

Unless you want your:

Name
Address
All land holdings in your name
All objects that you have in world fully listed and described
Where you go, when you log in, when you log out (once they have your UUID, whether they use that themsleves directly, or simply that information to others, who wish to spam you inworld, or for other purposes)

used, as and when they deem necessary, for whatever reason, then you should think hard about what information that could be collected about you, and that you think should NOT be revealed about you. Where should the line be drawn, who should draw it, and who should police it?

I think this might be a bad idea

I'll reserve judgment on the search engine itself - but putting out these for sale prims could lead to trouble I'd think. Like someone else said, it could be viewed as fraud. Selling someone a box of bricks instead of a TV off the back of a truck is considered such, I believe, even if good intentioned. It could also well lead to some very upset people who *do* sell the items named on these boxes, assuming they are not otherwise participating.

And yes, I tink it would be fair to someone to think there might be this-or-that item for sale somewhere that isn't the original store, and for a bargain price. Happens at yard sales in-world. An while it would be crazy to expect a kajillion Linden item to be selling for L$1, I dun tink one can underestimate the stupidity of newbies.

All that said, it's a cool form of protest, what ya'll are doin'. I hope ya dun get in lotsa trouble for it.

Mari

Well, that's actually a surprise... but they are at least a registered incorporated company, and the point I was trying to make still stands. Ok, same logic: how about placing something claiming to be a Nissan car, for L$5 instead of L$300?

If the OP isn't prepared to do this same thing to RL businesses who might take real action, then saying it's OK to do it to SL businesses because they probably won't is just being a bully, really.

well - thing is these sim owners arent advertizing anything.

The Bot decided to advertize it for them.

If they put these misnamed items in their stores, clubs, etc and people bought them its one thing.

But if its in one of their sky boxes or on their back porch?

... And you are trying to make sure that happens.

I agree with you that there are plenty of ethical issues associated with the Shepherd, but protesting against them in a way that might coincidentally hurt a whole bunch of other innocent businesses isn't right either. And, your protest isn't guaranteed to work. What will happen if, in spite of these concerns and your protests, the Shepherd does become a popular search engine.. maybe, it even becomes the standard.. but everyone just remembers that it turns up a bunch of wrong results for certain brands, so ignore them when you search?



Well, it seems that you are the one who is second-guessing that they will think it is OK. Unless you are actually asking them all for permission first of course.



I absolutely agree with you that these are concerns! I have nothing against what you're saying - only against the action you're suggesting to do about it. And besides it's really just part of the far more general concern about privacy in SL. A human can do anything that the Shepherd can do, just slower - but they can also do it better, because you can't fool a human just by renaming all your "naughty poseballs" to "Object".

See, there's a better protest! Just rename everything "Object". Human buyers don't look at the object name of a vendor anyway, they look at the texture. Of course you'll have to make sure that you rename it when you pick it up.

And I have no idea how you think that Shepherd can get people's RL names and addresses..

Is anyone really going to rename an empty prim to the name of a high-end product, and then put it on sale, by mistake?

I know about the thread where someone accidentally put some real products on sale and had them bought by someone unauthorised who saw them on the Shepherd - and that's definately a very bad thing that we should be concerned about - but actively giving the name to a prim that doesn't match, where you actually have deliberately type in the characters of the name of the high-end product for the Rename operation, doesn't seem to be something that's likely to be done by mistake.

I read both posts, you said that LL had made it clear that bots are here to stay. Rock pointed out that Copybot was declared a TOS infringment by LL.

I think that it is you that needs to reread what you said. Rock quoted it, and rebuffed it, accurately.

I for one am glad that someone is standing up to these bots. I have several friends who have suffered at their hands. Just look at all the threads on land stealing, content stealing, now prim stealing. Just read about all the misery and heartache people have endured because of their activities.

That anyone can support them saddens me beyond belief.

Well, Rock, I have strong doubts that this is going to work out the way you hope and plan, but I wish you the best of luck in trying it.

.