New Bot: The Estate Owners Fight Back!

I will defer to others on the question of TOS - but since when is finding a way around the letter of TOS a defense for something that demonstrably harms Residents and will obviously be detrimental to LL?

You could say that allowing residents to interact with each other is "demonstrably harmful." Would you have the lindens do away with that as well?

Seriously, you imagine malice where others see merit.

Some risks are tolerable if the benefits are sufficient. I see great benefit to what esc is doing, and I understand the drawbacks as well. Do you honestly believe that esc's search tool and methods will drive away more people than it attracts? Besides, the forums themselves do a far better job of psyching people up to leave secondlife than esc could ever aspire to.

We agree there are risks and harms associated with opt-out based search&list. We differ on how to effectively reduce those risks.

Residents interacting with each other generally do so voluntarily. ESC's searchbot site is not voluntary. They are caught up in it whether they want it or not, unless they find out about it and jump through hoops to get out of it. This is not interaction, it is imposition.

Damages are irrelevant to people's desire to be asked before being scanned and indexed.

The Government can wiretap someone's home and do no damage to them - its still objectionable.

Additionally anyone who thinks theres actually millions of SL users is being very naive.

But you are right in that its likely very few people who have suffered any financial damage from this.

The ancient Romans respected sophistry for its power to cloud minds and influence policy, but in the last analysis they had contempt for it.

Residents interacting with each other generally do so voluntarily. ESC's searchbot site is not voluntary. They are caught up in it whether they want it or not, unless they find out about it and jump through hoops to get out of it. This is not interaction, it is imposition.

The benefits are not sufficient. The bot misses the overwhelming majority of items meant for sale and yet lists as if legitimately for sale virtually every item where the for sale option was not cancelled through oversight, ignorance, or reliance on widespread, longstanding practice in SL. It is not a useful tool for buyers and sellers in the context of SL; it is a useful tool for grifters wanting to victimize the unsuspecting in the context of SL.

Will it drive away more people than it attracts? As it now exists, it will attract grifters, and it is hard to see how this "tool" would attract anyone else. It will tend to drive away people who do not like to be victimized. I will leave it to you to imagine which group is more numerous. I for one do not consider all that a plus and I am at a loss as to how you might imagine that is desirable for LL, SL, or its Residents. In the long run it is even bad for ESC, if the latter means to be a continuing business, because it demonstrates that ESC is blundering and incompetent at the very least. The disingenuousness of ESC and its supporters in this matter will also be harmful to ESC because it suggests bad faith and worse character; in general, the people in SL are intelligent people who can think for themselves, not sheep. ESC continues to dig its own grave, IMO.

So, ESC imposes a tool on Residents largely without their knowledge that fundamentally fails to do what it purports to do but injures them, and then stubbornly defends it on specious and disingenuous grounds rather than withdraw it and fix it. 'Nuff said.

As to these forums, I can see why ESC would not like them. I do not think they will drive anyone away from SL at all and it would be interesting to know why you imagine they would. However, if the corporate sponsors ESC apparently courts and gets money from get wind of what is laid out in these threads, I can see where it might drive THEM away - from ESC, anyway.

Well, that exercise turned out to be refreshing, actually. Keep posting like this, Rusty. It provides a good opportunity to refresh people on what is going on here and what is at stake. The more ESC and its apologizers spout, the worse it gets for them.

So basically your objection (which you have repeated on many pages) is that you like your privacy and the TOS are too loose for your liking.


...In the final analysis I feel there are far worse problems in the world than a nascent bot that indexes for sale items in a virtual world. For example the 30,000 RL children who die each day due to poverty or the obesity epidemic in the USA or the erosion of RL human rights such as habius corpus. A little perspective goes a long way....

Your opinions. Others disagree. You completely discount the fact that this is an early beta, and while you people are bitching and moaning over here, crying about how it is violating your privacy, and ruining your Second Lives (I doubt it is doing either) they, over there, are asking for constructive feedback and suggestions to improve the system, so that it does its intended job, and does so without being invasive. It seems to me that you people get some sort of jolly out of contriving these quasi intellectual counter positions, to whatever the new thing of the day is, just for the thrill of reading back to yourselves the post you just wrote.

Anything that's new in Second Life is automatically evil. In this case, somebody, perhaps stupidly, set out a bunch of expensive items on his sims for sale to anyone at zero dollars. Left them there, left the sim open to the public. After all these pages upon pages of diatribe, I no longer have sympathy of any sort for him. Not now.

This entire thing is beyond stupid now.

If the new abuse system comes into effect, and a bunch of folks file abuse reports on the search bots, and the region owners that get the abuse reports ban the search bots from their regions, how many regions would a search bot have to be banned from in order to catch the eye of the Linden abuse staff?

If the new abuse system comes into effect, and a bunch of folks file abuse reports on the search bots, and the region owners that get the abuse reports ban the search bots from their regions, how many regions would a search bot have to be banned from in order to catch the eye of the Linden abuse staff?

I don't particularly take to being called hysterical simply because I disagree with someone's position. In fact, I have not seen any "hysteria" in this thread whatsoever. Nor do I think it is your place to decide what "other issues" other people should be concerned about, rather than this one.

Getting stuff bought out from under you falls into the realm of "user error" in my book.
There's a lot to learn, people will make mistakes and there's no way to prevent people from making them. The lindens could nerf the hell out of secondlife and all it might save folks from a few errors. What fun this world would be then. Not.

What makes me hysterical is that despite how cautious I may be... I can lose unique valuables by merely trying to rez them in world. No user error... other than trusting secondlife to perform a function it's supposed manage reliably.

But no, let's complain about bots instead, because that's so much more important.

But no, let's complain about bots instead, because that's so much more important.

the 30,000 RL children who die each day due to poverty or the obesity epidemic in the USA or the erosion of RL human rights such as habius corpus.

So basically your objection (which you have repeated on many pages) is that you like your privacy and the TOS are too loose for your liking.

In the final analysis I feel there are far worse problems in the world than a nascent bot that indexes for sale items in a virtual world. For example the 30,000 RL children who die each day due to poverty or the obesity epidemic in the USA or the erosion of RL human rights such as habius corpus. A little perspective goes a long way....

Oh and I am fully aware that there are not millions consistently active in SL. I left my naivity behind me a long time and many countries ago.

Your opinions. Others disagree. You completely discount the fact that this is an early beta, and while you people are bitching and moaning over here, crying about how it is violating your privacy, and ruining your Second Lives (I doubt it is doing either) they, over there, are asking for constructive feedback and suggestions to improve the system, so that it does its intended job, and does so without being invasive. It seems to me that you people get some sort of jolly out of contriving these quasi intellectual counter positions, to whatever the new thing of the day is, just for the thrill of reading back to yourselves the post you just wrote.
.

Getting stuff bought out from under you falls into the realm of "user error" in my book.
There's a lot to learn, people will make mistakes and there's no way to prevent people from making them. The lindens could nerf the hell out of secondlife and all it might save folks from a few errors. What fun this world would be then. Not.

What makes me hysterical is that despite how cautious I may be... I can lose unique valuables by merely trying to rez them in world. No user error... other than trusting secondlife to perform a function it's supposed manage reliably.

But no, let's complain about bots instead, because that's so much more important.

Okay, without indulging in Har's fancy vocabulary or juggling:

The chief objections to esc that I've seen:

1- It indexes PUBLIC DATA.

2- It helps show exactly how unsafe buy-for-0 transfers really are.

3- It reaffirms that Secondlife has far less privacy than we want.

4- esc is getting paid for this and they're not sucking up to us enough.

Don't like it?

1- tough.
2- adapt.
3- me either. Keep asking lindens for more and better privacy controls, and pray.
4- whatever.

Okay, without indulging in Har's fancy vocabulary or juggling:

The chief objections to esc that I've seen:

1- It indexes PUBLIC DATA.

2- It helps show exactly how unsafe buy-for-0 transfers really are.

3- It reaffirms that Secondlife has far less privacy than we want.

4- esc is getting paid for this and they're not sucking up to us enough.