New Bot: The Estate Owners Fight Back!

Did you forget these ones:
Combat bots for use in combat sims?
Greeter bots? (although extremely annoying, nothing irresposible or unethical about them)
Conversation bots? (pointless but not evil)

Those are just 3 uses that nobody complains about. Not all bots are bad, not all bot owners are unethical, not all bot coders dive straight in without any thought. The fact that there's a couple of bots that made big news doesn't mean all bots are the same.

Hi Cindy. That is a good, creative attempt at a work-around. Thanks for your effort.

Well, that will work IF the no-copy item in question is modifyable. Essentially what you're doing is the same sort of positioning that Rez-Foo or Builder's Buddy does for placing a house on a site, but using sim-reference coordinates rather than relative positioning from a rez box. It could work for a couple small things in a build, but rapidly becomes impossibe on a sim-wide or multi-sim building project, where you might have 20 to 40 homes full of stuff to place. Or imagine trying to do that with all the multimedia and DJ gear in a club? It might work, but it would be a major mess. It would probably be less effort to force the client to procure and roughly place each no-copy item, the same way that I have to do for no-transfer content. Then, with mod rights, I can move the things to where they belong. But that sort of thing eliminates most of the benefits of hiring someone to position content for you in-world, as the client still has to go everywhere and do almost the same work the hired builder will be asked to do, just with less precision needed.

Your suggestion would not be usable on no-copy/no-mod items, since you can't add a script to those.

For stuff I am building myself, or if it can be copied, I wouldn't worry too much. I keep backup copies of all my own work, and if someone did swoop in and swipe a custom build of mine, I'd just AR them and rez another copy.

(thank for the post)

I think maybe tho the enemy has manifested some.

Land Bots for example could have been designed not to be swoopers by limiting themselves to not buy bellow $1L/SQM for example - But they werent.

The infamous Copy Bot.

This Opt out system for the searchbot was irresponsible. The searchbot is more of a spy bot in that it scans everyone prims everywhere it can get at. Even if you opt out - you still get scanned and it goes into the database. Its just not displayed on the search.

Someone else will make a Spybot they doesnt bother with such niceties.

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On the island thing - you live on that Gated Community/ Private Island for a better quality of "Life" - We shouldnt deny mainland inhabtants attempts at a similiar quality.

I live on a private Island as well and we banned the searchbot from the entire sim. But its a sim open to visitors , so bots will get in, I can see thats obvious.

Although the no privacy argument is thrown around a lot - we shouldnt ASPIRE to having no privacy.

Yes I do live in the USA. I was taught as a young child that you do not go onto to someone else's property if you are not invited. It is simple, if it is my property, you are not welcome on it, unless I invite you. SL or RL rules of polite conduct are the same. Rules most people should have been taught as toddlers, you know like : "If it is not yours don't touch it." "Don't go onto another's land with out permission." " Don't curse." "Treat others as you would have them treat you."

I don't have a script like you mention, I should not have to get one. It is my property, that I am giving as a gift, if it is IN my house, why would someone assume it is for sale to the public?

Even tho, SL only exists as electroic data on a server somewhere, the rules of polite conduct should be followed.

Oh, in RL, I do leave my doors unlocked. If some one is stupid or rude enough to enter without permission, well they can deal with the dog and my shotgun.

You are refering to scripted objects I beleive.

Not Bots as in Accounts using an edited client to automate it.

Ive yet to see any of those things in the terms of a BOT in the context of what we are discussing here.

If they exist then Im unaware of them.

Careful Cindy. Verbal abuse like that is against the CS and the TOS, and is an ARable offence, and applies to the forums too.

Selling fake items might be considered fraud, but setting them at L$0 is not selling, it is giving away.

Doing something extreme like buying your own island? I bought several, did not spare me any grief whatsoever.

Privacy in SL does not exist?
One of the Big Six in the CS (violation of which can get you expelled from the comunity) says: Residents are entitled to a reasonable level of privacy with regard to their Second Lives.

Another says:
Every Resident has a right to live their Second Life. Disrupting scheduled events, repeated transmission of undesired advertising content, the use of repetitive sounds, following or self-spawning items, or other objects that intentionally slow server performance or inhibit another Resident's ability to enjoy Second Life are examples of Disturbing the Peace.

I would say that other objects...[that] inhibit another resident's ability to enjoy Second Life applies in my case. My Peace was certainly Disturbed! My way of working was disturbed. My privacy was disturbed.

It should not be for me to have to enforce my privacy with estate tools, ban lines, security orbs, and the like. It may be foolish not to take security precautions, but that does not absolve the burglar from his crime. If I leave my rl door unlocked and a burglar steals my things, I am foolish, but the burglar will still be convicted by the court.

If the British guy who just lost his appeal against extradition to the States for invading the US Military networks simply tells the court (as he did here) that he did not 'hack' into anything, as all the sites he visited had no passwords set, do you think the court in the States will say, Oh, well that's all right then, it's the Military's fault for not locking up their networks properly. Set him free! Give him a horse! No, one senator has already said he will fry for this. He faces 40 years in jail. They will say that he had no Authority to go into those networks, and the fact they were left unprotected did not convey authority.

You are quick to use RL concepts such as Fraud in SL, while not willing to accept other RL concepts such as Trespass, Invasion of Privacy, Data Protection. Why?

As other people have pointed out, when you want to set an object for sale, you must click the For Sale check box FIRST before you can change the price from the default value of L$10. There is an amount of time in between checking that box, and entering the new price and clicking OK. Bots are fast, as Sys has pointed out so eloquently, the ESC does not buy, just lists for their website, but there is nothing stopping anyone else from using the same software to create a bot that swoops almost instantly on a high-ticket item in that small time window, just as the land bots did when someone made a pricing or plot size mistake, as reported in the forums, and bought it up so fast, before the error could be corrected.

The actions of ESC have exposed a serious vulnerability in sale transactions.

Cindy? Ban lines or not, this bot will screw people over.

Some of us prefer not to surround our homes with stone walls topped with barbed wire, just to maintain a little privacy. And that is what it looks like to me when people throw up "ban everyone" ban lines on their parcels. When I want privacy in my skybox, I activate a security orb up thre, tuned to never exceed the limits of my parcel. I do that as a courtesy to those who may be sailing their boat past my dock down below, because I don't want to bounce them off ban lines when I am not down there, just because they drift too close. But that doesn't mean I want them to turn my front yard into a vehicle parking lot, or to allow all of them to walk into my house and make free with my private pool or my scripted bed. It's my HOME, not a public amusement park!.

I am getting rather sick of the attitude of "The door is unlocked, or I am capable of kicking it in, so it's OK for me to go in there and do what I damned well please." No, it isn't. It's my land, I paid for it, not you. And if I don't want you snooping in my bedroom drawers and posting on the internet a list of what sort of sex toys I prefer, then I do have a right to that privacy. I shouldn't have to post an armed guard in the building to prevent you from doing so.

This bot will waltz right through a sim, it will catalog things that were NEVER intended for sale, and even those which are on parcels that are explicitly restricted with ban lines, and there is only ONE way to stop it. By going to Sheep Island and opting out. Can't you see where that is a problem?

What powers are they planning on giving these people?

The lil Bit in the Blog doesnt spell anything out.

Each of those things can exist in either form, scripted object or avatar bot.
Combat bots written in LSL probably wouldn't perform too well.
Chat bots can be written in LSL to draw their chat from a website, but a chat bot as an avatar has the possibility of drawing it's chat straight from HDD with a faster response.
Greeter bots are already moving to avatars for some things. The one that ESC has to invite people to a group is a greeter bot, it just gives you a group invite instead of a notecard.

Besides, a bot is a bot no matter which language it is written in.

Cory, I hope you have alerted Forsetti to this thread, because I do want to discuss having this search bot be an opt-in process.

coco

I would only add one thing to an otherwise excellent post. The items we posess are only bits of pixilated code true, but I "bought" them with Real Money. They are in my house, on my land which i bought with real money. My Premium is paid for with real money. Since the only thing you seem to get now for your 10 bucks a month is the finger, how about giving us a litlle sense of PERCIEVED privacy.

It is amazing how so many people are rushing to defend the interests of petty grifters who use this searchbot's results to take advantage of people who overlook things, make honest errors, in some cases don't even know how to get rid of the for-sale tage on certain items, or who are relying on a longstanding workaround of a design defect in good faith in areas where they have had no reason to suppose they were vulnerable to swooping.

These grifters are the only obvious beneficiaries of this "service" atm. Sellers generally don't benefit - it can't read the contents of the vendor devices they use for the vast majority of sales in-world. Buyers who are not seeking to take advantage and sucker-punch their fellow Residentswhen they buy aren't benefited particularly - because they don't see the contents of vendors either. People who generally do-it-yourself do not benefit - and are harmed to the extent that they too might inadvertently leave a for-sale flag on something they have no intention of selling. This searchbot is obviously fatally flawed and should not be offered as a benefit to honest buyers and honest sellers; to do so borders on fraud, IMO.

Yet we see an enormous outpouring of deceit, Orwellian Newspeak, bafflegab and arrogant attempts at verbal bullying in defense of something apparently benefiting only grifters. One wonders what these people's motives are.

Now, some of the people who have been harmed already and others who see they can or will be harmed in time, have taken steps to render this meretricios swooping less effective or ineffective by deploying decoys on their property - can you say Your land, your rules? And the response is an amazing outpouring of near-hysteria from ESC apologists. We have people actually complaining that plywood prims with expensive-product names on people's private, noncommercial property are wrong becaus if the grifters buy them they won't be getting what they expected!

Invalidating the results of this egregious assault on SL residents seems to be hitting these people where it hurts a lot. Rock, it looks like you are onto something right here.

I don't know what the underlying motives of ESC and its minions are, but they are motives that are being hidden. I presume for a reason. And the results are already demonstrably bad for people.

Let's keep up the good work, and find more creative ways to get rid of this useless-yet-oddly-antisocial piece of crap being foisted by ESC.

(BTW: a L$0 dummy of a valuable product could contain a lead to the creator's point of sale for those wanting to buy at the appropriate price. Nice advertising, service, there, Rock. : ))

The bit that worries me is the plan to roll it out to the entire grid. Fair enough, estate managers dealing with abuse reports on their own land (as long as they aren't given warning/suspension powers), but who gets to see all the abuse reports on the mainland? The person with the the most land in that sim? If that's the case, bot owners and land flippers will be responsible for a lot of ARs.
If it's a vote system, how do you stop people buying up most of an empty or new sim with their mates, getting themselves elected then flipping all that land?

I wonder if anyone will pick up on the privacy implications of this one?
Rent land on a private estate, receive threatening or harrasing IMs, are you going to jump to mainland to file a report or are you going to let the estate owner and the managers they select read how some noob wants to violate you with a prim?
When it moves to mainland, it gets even worse as a complete stranger will be able toread it all.
Is privacy of prims still that important?

So your only actual example of a responsible bot is one that Spams you with a group invite?

I specifcally was refering to the Account Based Client altered Bots all having been introduced in an irresponsible manner.

I was writing in a thread about such bots. You broadening the definition to make my post inccorrect - doesnt necessarily.

LSL bots are limited by LSL and the fact that they are Objects.

Client based Bots are not currently regualted, other than Copybots.

Of course its possible to have Responsibly run bots - My statement is that were not seeing them.

Privacy of prims is important - its a different issue than this.

Its a related symptom of the bigger problem tho.

The Issue is Linden Labs is wanting to be more and more hands off, when the grids probably not ready for them to be.

If these Estate Managers are given Account Suspension/Banning powers we have a serious problem. Your access to Second Life should not be a popularity contest.

This could all have been easily avoided very simply. ESC or LL or whomever should have announced: What this program entailed, How to Opt in (preferably) or Opt out and how to protect your items, and When it was going to start BEFORE it started. They didn't come forward on thsi until this thread, the 2nd one on the subject I've seen on this forum, became an issue. The crap the put out about making opt in not possible due to the fact that it would kill the project, speaks volumes about the idea. This was handled the way it was is due to 1 of 2 reasons. Either deliberate deceit, or an incompetent business decision. In either case this is an outfit I have no desire to have any dealings with.

(This may be deemed as being hysterical by some here, but I've spent about $500 on Sl in the 4 months I've been here, I think that buys me a little hysteria)

I'd say there's a serious problem in that people can read what is basically SLs equivalent of police reports. The AR system as it is now is anonymous to the person being reported and everybody else. The names of those being reported are also anonymous even on the "police" blotter. Give the power to everybody and you lose that anonymity.
What if the person who is being reported is the same person handling the reports?
What if the abuse report contains personal information?

I actually think Coco was on to something.

Corey's denial of such, while appreciated, doesnt necessirly mean its the way things are.
Corey admitted to not being part of the decisions behind the system.


A list of all prims rezzed in Second Life has some value. Especially to people thinking of starting up business in Second Life.

It may be that Electric Sheep's motivations have nothing to do with giving such a list to any corporate interest. I am skeptical though.

If Electric Sheep doesnt provide such a list - its only a matter of time before someone does.

I think Coco has been dead center pefect on this topic. I am not that interested in the intricasies, the why's and how's. I come to Second Life to get away from critical thinking. I just ask:Why the secrecy? Why did it take 2 threads on this forum alone for this to be shabbily explained? In and of itself it may not be a big deal. But it can be the beginning of an unacceptable trend.

the problem I see is this:

this tech WILL be used for marketing purposes, or spying purposes. It's only a matter of time. I'm not exactly sure if ESC doesn't have marketing purposes in mind. What people say and what they do are often two different things. Money talks.

When I look at the spam coming in on my various email addresses, I have an idea which entity I gave an email to, sold it, due to intentional FUD I sometimes put in the accounts I create on whatever site. It shows back up again. Many are sites which say they don't sell your information. Well, down the road they did it anyway.

People DO sell your information, and the opt out on this program doesn't mean your info is deleted, it merely means it's not displayed. I'm quite sure they have all the information and it's not going anywhere. I opted out, but I have no assurances that my opt out will result in my info not being continually maintained, or any assurances against other bots with far less scruples than ESC.

Which means I'm less likely to leave things rezzed that can be indexed, that I'm working on. I'm less likely to use descriptive names but FUD ones now, just to confuse people who shouldn't be peeking. Yes this is a security breach for content creators. Yes it puts some in a position where they can better spy on content creators, and possibly pass off information about what a content creator is doing to others. Such as competitors.

I had said in a previous post that this search function is mostly useless for me. It has absolutely no way to let people search the things I would WANT it to search for, while the list is full of items I would not expect anyone to search for. It didn't even show my clothing products - which are sold in prims - while it showed my cheap/free wares which are gifts for coming in my shop to look around. I could not even get the list to list the more expensive prims which were further down the list and higher in price, and therefore scrolled off the displayed list. It only showed the cheap/free stuff, except in the one store where I have less prims actually for sale and it managed to show my erotica book product. (which btw - is NOT child safe - got a filter for adult content? No, they don't)

And needless to say its not listing any of my skin products, which are sold exclusively in vendors so I can keep better reporting on my customer list. And those are my high ticket items. So nobody really gets a good idea what I actually sell from this bot, anyway. And if I opted in - THOUSANDS of my prims would be listed on the site, including the ones where I exactly don't want ANYONE just dropping in.

I am also affected by the bug of some items appearing for sale, which aren't. A freebie gift I gave to some people via inventory and now shows up on the site for sale. They're not for sale, but as a responsibility to my customers, I opted out so their privacy wouldn't be invaded due to my error in sending them an item marked for sale. (even though nobody can actually buy it)

Good points.

Im okay with LL shuffling off "nusciance" things like trees over the boundaries, or prims over property lines, etc.

Trash pickup, whatever.

But disputes between residents. Ouch talk about an invasion of privacy.

This will do one of two things

One, Peopel will AR a whole lot less becuase they wont trust a system run by residents.


Two - worse , People will go to their freind who is a "Authority" (whever were gonna call these people) and report anyone they are annoyed with,



I hope they have a really good plan for this.

Although, again I wonder, what good is a list of all the prims rezzed on the grid going to do anyone?

Here's a few scenarios that I can think of:

1. Corporation X is coming into SL. Every single corporate project I've seen on the grid thus far is about promoting their brand or items or business, not establishing a brand new one based on SL specific marketing data that could be derived from such a list.
   
2. Individual wishes to start a business in SL. Marketing data from a list of all the prims rezzed in SL might give a possible idea as to what kinds of businesses flourish the best, but in my experience the vast majority of SL business owners bring previously acquired skills to thier new SL business or else find a talent and nurture it. Because your suspicion that clothing is the biggest retail market in SL could (or couldn't) be confirmed with a list like that, doesn't give you as an individual the skills necessary to succeed in the market, nor the desire or passion involved to raise your skills to that level.
   
3. A list of all the prims rezzed in SL doesn't tell you the type, style, quality, or even necessarily the correct information about that prim/object. That's an awful lot of static to wade through - think of everything named "Object" on the grid (as some might remember when everything named "Object" was temporarily deleted from a number of sims last year).
   
4. Because there's no corresponding sales data to go along with the list, there's no conception of how well an object sells, how long the business has existed, what kind of time investment vs. profit ratio was established, if the seller rents/buys/is allowed to put their store there for free...there's a huge other list of factors that would make a simple list of all objects on the grid useful, but which simply aren't available without people volunteering that information.
   
5. Far more valuable information for businesses, both individual and corporate, is provided already with the LL metrics they provide each month on the blog, along with the occasional surveys LL takes of businesses already in operation.
   

To summize, I simply don't see the benefit of such an all-encompassing list to anyone without a lot of additional analyzation and paring down of the data - much of which simply can't be done without additional input from the owners of the objects, and even then would provide an extremely blurry photo of only what types of objects are currently rezzed. It wouldn't take into account any of the factors that businesses are generally interested in, i.e. sales data, usage, etc.





The first information posted was on ESC's website on April 10th, a day after the search site's release: http://blogs.electricsheepcompany.com/giff/?p=337

That and subsequent posts on the topic are accessable on the company website, which is honestly a place I would check first if I had questions about a company's service or product. Many of ESC members don't read the forums, although I do and have since before I joined; in this way we're not that different from the majority of SL residents. The forums have always had a traditionally small readership compared to the population as a whole.

I would like to get back to the topic of why this can't be made opt-in. That would automatically clear up all the problems with this search bot.

Cory, if you could alert Forsetti to this thread, perhaps we could discuss that further.

coco

I'll do my best, but I know he's leaving town tomorrow (as am I the following day) for conferences - I would recommend, if you haven't already, contacting allears - at - sheeplabs.com, the email address set up specifically for questions and feedback on the project (also listed in the blog post above from the 10th). The response time to a direct inquiry would probably be faster and more effective.

I IM'ed one member with the URL of the thread where it was highlighted that ESC's search site included - admittingly trivial - RL information about me in a way that was impossible for me to opt out of (in context: a friend put my RL birthday party invitation up on the wall in their house and it suffered from the "mark for sale but not really for sale" bug).

You can't claim that those responsible for the bot aren't aware of the forums when I received an acknowledgement of that particular thread later in an offline IM.