New Bot: The Estate Owners Fight Back!

Why does it matter if its by mistake?

The spybot shouldnt be snooping around and finding items in their bedroom anyhow.

If I want to put a piece of paper in my bedroom and write "War and Peace: $10" on it - and never intend to publish it - what am I doing thats fraudulent?

I wish I had a searchbot. Really, I have lost object all over SL, (ever run into a ban parcel while flying a vehicle, or eject by a security orb without warning) that never got sent back to my lost and found. I would also like to request a scan on request of sims that had my objects in them.

Well, opting into the ESC program apparently shows all items that you own, not just the default of 'for sale' objects that we start out at. So, what if you opted in, searched for yourself on the site, picked up your items or contacted the parcel owners where you couldn't get in, then opted back out?

Wouldn't a blanket opt-out by everyone that's against it render the system useless and make a more effective form of protest? Since the only ones who will fall for the trick are new folks all you may end up doing is spoiling their initial experience. They may even just ignore te experience and keep using the bot since there will still be plenty of "genuine" objects they can by through it.

Just my tuppence worth, please be gentle I don't suit my asbestos clothes anymore

Well, um, why would someone want a blank prim, on sale, and named after a popular product with enough resemblance that it could be mistaken for it, around in their bedroom? An attractive talking point? Such an object is technically a griefing item anyway. I don't know if they're ARable - I suspect not, under the "caveat emptor" principle. The problem is that if we ask them to caveat too much, all the emptors will just quit or not buy anything.



I agree, but if you want to protest, do something that hurts the bot or the Sheep, not innocent buyers and businesses.



Um, setting an item For Sale with the SL tools is the equivalent of publishing it. The moment you do it, SL installs all the infrastructure for anyone to click on that item, Buy, and pay their L$ and transfer ownership. It's not like writing "$10" on the paper, it's like hiring a 24-hour cashier to stand in your bedroom and deal with transactions for the piece of paper. Why would you do that..?

This is a good point -

Of course theres also the

I shouldnt have to opt out of something I shouldnt have been included in on in the first place

Issue.

Nice idea, but a only a very small percentage of SL's residents use the message boards, so it's unlikely that enough people know about the bot to make this approach effective.

Oh I completely agree! I just think that, now we are stuck in it (at least until something is done), it would be easier and more effective to just get out and ignore it.

I disagree. All you do when you put something for sale, is put it for sale.

You didnt put it in a store, a yard sale, a mall, a club, or any other commercial place. You didnt even put it in your front yard with a Sign that said "Stuff for sale"

You never announced to anyone anywhere you wanted to sell the item. You merely put sales tag on it.

You never stopped to ask me if I had contacted any of the creators of objects to see if we could do this. you justs assumed.

I also said in my OP that "The measures employed will be reviewed on a continuing basis."
this means that if anyone objects to the use of the name of their product in our litter prims, then those names will removed immediately. They do not need to find any opt-out box, in a distant sim. I have already started receiving offers from content creators to use the names of their products in this campaign, so we are not short of options here.

However, we also intent to continuously monitor the situation, and adapt our measures accordingly. All good suggestions will be considered. Renaming a object to 'Object' could very well be one tactic, although we have some scripting friends also looking at the situation concerning UUIDs.

I also never said that Shepherd can get RL names and addresses. I was referring throughout to SL names and addresses. RL people don't have poseballs, at least i don't think they do Wish there was some though, I know which ones I would get!

And to answer another poster. There are no police on the streets of SL. We cannot equate RL crimes with SL crimes (if such a term has any meaning). Otherwise I could have stopped all this by complaining to the SL police that someone had entered my property without my permission. That is trespass at the very least.

I do not like this. I don't like this at all. Even if one is using dummy products, I hope that those dummy products are from people who are participating in the 'ruse.' Or an opt-out, because at least the searchsheep has one! (I'm opting out on this one.)

I agree with Yumi, I'd take offense if my store's name was being dragged through the mud. I've worked hard on my customer service and the last thing I'd need is someone who doesn't know any better to IM me accusing my "business" of screwing them over. This would put me in the position of having to either tick off a potential customer or loosing the purchase price of an item, because someone else created a prim with what was supposed to be my merchandise in it. But it would be ME that suffers, not the person that set out the prim... So? Do I think it's a good idea? No.

Why go to all this trouble and I do mean trouble, just to ruin a program that has some use and *gasp* has an opt out option?

*edit* Well, so there is an opt-in for this. Still not interested. Seems kinda silly to me. I assumed that it was just going to use brands without permission, because it was never properly worded in the OP. Plus this just sets it up for those that have issues with other stores to ruin reps, and blame it on your cause.

hold it - pressed submit instead of save changes.

Hmm... this could be a clever marketing ploy by ESC. I think I will go check this thing out now...

I like your attitude, Rock.

I, too, am tired of being told to leave if I don't like something that someone else decides to do to benefit themselves.

As for what it cost ESC to put Shepherd Bot inworld - it cost whatever they are paying themselves for it.

According to the link I put in the other thread, Electric Sheep Company received $7,000,000 of funding to do things exactly like this, from investors such as CBS.

http://www.raphkoster.com/2007/02/26/the-sheep-get-funding/

From Reuters:
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"We're helping (entertainment companies) bring their audiences into Second Life or other virtual worlds and then developing more entertainment experiences for that audience," Electric Sheep Chief Executive Sibley Verbeck said in a phone interview last week.

Verbeck, whose 45-employee company's headquarters is in Second Life, admitted that despite the media attention Second Life has attracted, it remains tough to learn for new users. . .

. . . Electric Sheep plans to use the financing to create software to make virtual worlds ready for mainstream consumption, he [Verbeck] said.

For corporate clients, Electric Sheep said it offers tools that help them track usage in the world, providing data that could be used by marketers.

http://www.reuters.com/article/televisionNews/idUSN2518789120070226?pageNumber=2

-----

So no, the service is not for us. It is for ESC's corporation clients.

coco

Oh wow, look at all those bots wearing balaclavas climbing out the windows with their swag bags.

Bots can only do what normal avatars can do, but faster. If a normal avatar cannot "steal" your land, neither can a bot. If a normal avatar cannot "steal" your items, neither can a bot.

Accusing bot owners of theft, rape (as somebody else did) or similar is using language completely out of proportion. Would you like if it we all said your friends are dribbling morons who don't have the mental capacity to wipe their own backsides? Or would we be trolls for doing that?

Your friends made mistakes, they were not robbed. The bot owners may be unethical for taking advantage, but they aren't thieves.


No, they have to know about this forum thread, and then post or IM you to "opt out". Whatever way you look at it, you just "opted in" a lot of people without their consent.
This is known as hypocrisy.

Lovely

I like this approach. Please ignore people who seem more interested in trolling and playing Gotcha! See how more clever I am than you? than in actually dealing with problems. I suppose you could slightly alter trademarked names for your little project, if you really wanted to be on the safe side. But frankly, if I were the seller of a product meant to be top-of-the-line and you put its name on one of your prims, I would be pleased with the implied compliment and the free advertising.

Come to think of it, maybe the makers of such high-end products might be willing to make unscripted and otherwise unusable shells of their products available to you for pricing at L$0 so you wouldn't have to clutter up your sims with those ugly plywood cubes.

And maybe placing a suitable worded notecard inside the prim explaining the folly of engaging in this swooping practice might be educational.

May I also modestly repeat here my earlier suggestion in another thread to use this search website to go on a systematic buying spree, picking up "for-sale" items the searchbot finds placed by Lindens, Electric Sheep and anybody associated with it; sites of large corporations in-world (who are the sorts of customers ESC seems to seek); and anyone else who might be listened to by the people at Electric Sheep Company? (Plus, Linden Labs is in a position to fix some of the SL design deficiencies this issue has brought to light.) After all, if ESC didn't want you to use their site to buy them, they wouldn't be listed, would they?

Also, could people please use this thread to post further strategies for dealing with this egregious and stupidly designed product? There are lots of people in SL with technical knowhow and creative imaginations who could possibly really help here. It's fine to grouse that Linden Labs leaves us largely on our own to deal with in-world problems that don't obviously affect LL's bottom line or valued metrics, but don't stop there. Help do something about the problems!

Happy shopping!

i haven't seen it yet and i'm curious... what is the URL to this search list that has been gathered.

Amity Slade already asked back on page 1 if it would only be done for objects where the creators had given permission. Since nobody replied to say yes, I figured it wasn't the case. It would have been rather silly for me to ask again a question that had already been asked!



Do you know for sure that doing this will also remove them from the Shepherd? And no, you can't say "it's not my fault if it doesn't" - you've made the decision in advance to deliberately manipulate the Shepherd, so you're responsible for your deliberate manipulations.

As for the removal argument, well, if I put up a big sign that libels you, is it OK as long as I take it down as soon as you find out about it and ask me to, even if 100+ people saw it in the meantime, and the memory won't be removed from their heads?



Well, if the protest is being done on an opt-in basis then I have no objections at all.



Harvesting UUIDs might be a concern, but UUIDs can't be used to establish that an object is a "naughty poseball". Not that I know of, anyway. About the only meaningful UUIDs I know are the ones of the very early Lindens



If I look through your window and I see a cashier with a cash register smiling and ready to take my or anyone else's money for one of the things in your house then what am I to conclude? Especially if your door is unlocked, too. (And believe it or not, there are RL shops that work like this.)

The context in which the original comment was made was that LL has decided to make the client open source and that means bots. If that's not something that you can deal with, you might consider moving on. Like it or not, bots are here to stay.

One would assume if this company had any scruples, they would have made right by Rock. They advertise their garbage here, rest assured they monitor these forums for feedback.

I would think much of this reaction could have been prevented had ESC showed some balls at the first sign of trouble and stepped up to work this out with the Estate owners.

There is no Excuse for offering Fake Items for Sale.

There is no Excuse for Putting your good Items up for sale, for 0L$, and leave them in place for Days, waiting for someone to buy them.

The Electric Sheep Company created this bot and search Engine to help SL Citizens finding Products - now you fight them like this ?
You should be ashamed.

In real life, if you put a sales tag on an object, I can't take out my money, place it on the object, have that money magically disappear into your bank account, and then become the owner of that object. In SL, I can; that's what the For Sale command does. If you want to place something resembling an RL sales tag on the object, you can make one out of prims.

Well, not really - the general argument is very sound. There's already been a case of a number of objects that were set for transfer to another builder in a private sim being bought up by a stranger who saw them on the Shepherd - yes, that risk always existed with the For Sale system, but it hadn't come up that way before. Do we know for certain that the Shepherd doesn't store the details of objects that aren't on sale? Maybe it just doesn't list them? And even if the Shepherd doesn't, what stops someone making a bot that does?

My only complaint is about the way they're protesting, not the thing being protested about.

Interesting point. But surely the movement would lose a lot of power and momentum if the participants were limited to using product names that only they have created?


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