New Bot: The Estate Owners Fight Back!

Hmmm...., yes the "Your opinion is of no interest to me, therefore it is valuless" syndrome. PS.. how did you know my real last name was Murphy?

One point that seems to be missed a lot is that not everyone knows how much everything in SL is supposed to cost. There have been many posts stating something to the effect of "why would anyone think that an item worth 10,000 was being sold for 10?". Why would anyone expect everyone to know how much it was supposed to cost? There are many very useful and cool things in SL for $10 or less. Someone legitimately searching for something specific without knowing that expensive versions exist could see a listing for a cheap item and go buy it. This does not automatically make them thieves, grifters, or anything else. Sure the current tool has a long way to go, and the people working on it admit that, but there's no reason to assume that the people using it are stealing. Some may be, but I would guess that the majority are not.

true. but let me ask this in ignorance of how the programs work? When you see an item, do you buy it there or do you get a TP to where it is located? If the latter, and I were to do it, I don't think I would show up in someone's house and buy something from the house, no matter what it said if the person wasn't there or a Yard sale sign wasn';t posted. Just how i would react. I too am pretty much convinced now that this isn't a case of thievery, but of a badly designed program, implemented clumsily.

So, bottom line to date, ESC is showing absolutely no interest in repairing or withdrawing this plainly-worthless-yet-obviously-deleterious experiment it summarily imposed on SL residents without taking several easily available steps to inform them. Despite the obvious hit it is taking and will continue to take for it in SL.

No idea here what its motives are: One guesses it must have a moneyed client that wants all this resident-prim data for whatever reason, and I don't know enough about Internet marketing to imagine what that reason might be. Whatever ESC's reasons (or its client's), they don't matter here. ESC has clearly been exceptionally stupid and disingenuous about this "experiment" from start to now, and just as clearly shows no sign of letting up on its apparent folly or ever taking into consideration the welfare of SL residents.

So, we SL residents need to continue to take steps to deal with and nullify this griefing tool ourselves. We need to take care of ourselves and the SL platform we value.

Further ideas for doing so are welcome, beyond decoy primming and "shopping.". Tactics that generate spurious prim data seem especially effective (stay within TOS, now, gang). Let's hear those ideas, folks.

Ohh you know - I trespass in peopels homes all the time, I mean why not?, theres no privacy.

Who's to say their BDSM dungeon isnt actually a Mini-Mall? No one was there to tell me different.

They couldn't tell you if they were there. They'd all be gagged........

Yep your gonna love the 20,000L worth of stuff I got for 133L

Like I said- no one said anything. I was gonna leave a note but I didnt want to mess up their nice clean HOUSE.

If we ask people their consentment, they won't give us. So, it is better not to ask. WOW!

Everybody seems to forget one point : when a bot comes to harvest a web directory, what is indise HAS BEEN PUBLISHED (MADE PUBLIC). So, ESC is considering here that rezing a poseball in one's bedroom is PUBLISHING A SEXBALL.

All this could be solved with property zones. This link points to a Feature Suggestion discussion as to how that might be achieved.

/13/86/156211/1.html

In summary, privacy zones would stop the servers sending any information about the prims in a privacy zone to anyone's client who cannot access these zones, including bots.

Would have the added advantage of reducing lag, since less info needs to be passed to most visitors to the sim.

Would do away with ban lines!

Once the first complaint came through that someones stuff got sold out from under them, this thing shoulda been shut down. The beta has demonstrated an effect that is outside of the original intent. To have this thing continuing to operate as it does is sheer negligence and demonstrates utter disregard to the community at large. We cannot OPT OUT of a system we do not know exists.

While I think there's a lot of sophesty and witch-hunting in this thread, I totally agree with this point.

It's been suggested several times that the default opt-out setting be limited to parcles tagged as commercial land. ESC really should take the site down until they do that and fix the bug that mis-identifies which parcel objects are located on. This would go a long way towards making more rational people happier.

Well, I wouldn't give up that quickly.

We haven't heard from Forsetti yet, and I know he reads the forums (he posted in the last thread about this). I doubt he is unaware this controversy is going on.

They can start over and make this an opt-in system. Certainly enough people know about it by now and can opt in. And as I've said a number of times, a free search engine is something that most content creators would be happy to join.

I fear, though, that this is a sort of turning point. If this isn't done, then I fear the damage will be too much to the search engine for it to ever be of much use to anyone, or at least not to us residents. The question is now, WOULD they opt in. It is starting to become something people are mad about and want to opt OUT of.

As I said, I originally loved the idea of being in this (though I didn't love being PUT in it, and thought it should be opt-in). But if they are just going to stonewall the whole thing, and not work with people, then I'm starting to think I probably SHOULD opt out of it.

I really don't see that much would be lost at this point by instituting a new version with an opt-in mechanism - at least, not if they really mean it to be a search engine for the residents of SL. And at this point, it's starting to look like more will be lost if they don't.

coco

I'm not so sure Electric Sheep Company has anything to do with SL Exchange, but I'm having a hard time verifying that at the moment due to strong need for sleep.


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I know this is probably a dumb question, but I don't understand exactly how this bot is costing folks money or business or traffic or lag or getting friends to come over, or anything that is harmful. I'm sure it is, otherwise, nobody would care, but I don't see the how. Please explain this to me. Seriously, this is not a post of opinion, just trying to see what exactly the problem is.

What's puzzling me is people pay weekly up to 200,000L$ to be in top of classified ads which is a non free OPT IN system, and now here is an OPT OUT search system which is a brilliant idea but why OPT OUT? This search system could be non free OPT IN and still be attractive. OPT OUT is intruding you are making everybody suspicious with this approach.

I haven't played with it too much but I've noticed that only one page of results is returned, is it a bug? Anyway good idea but there's a lot of ironing to do on this.

For now I wouldn't be interested because there is not a single item checked for sale in my shop, so I don't appear at all in the search, everything is in scripted vendors... With an OPT IN system you could ask the vendors to add a special keyword in the description that your bot could recognise... You get more when you ask nicely, wether or not you have a gun.

That thought had occured to me. However, the ESC website is in English, and I suspect the objects being discussed here are primarily ones with English names and descriptions, and in general, I suspect that the vast majority of non-English speakers in SL do have some basic English reading abilities - enough to recognise "DO NOT BUY", especially those who have worked their way through the ESC search engine and descriptions to go to that object...


An alternative might be for the box to speak "DO NOT BUY" when it detects an avatar within range, so the Babbler tranlators would work. That could be a little instrusive though.

Matthew

I for one appreciate ESC's search engine experiment. I believe they will eventually search for way more than just for-sale objects, and if they don't, someone else will. Their Grid Shepherd is like the numerous robots that crawl all over the web 24/7 indexing web sites.

My favorite web search engine is Google. I use it to find what brand and model to buy, and where to buy it the cheapest or from the most trustworthy source. I use it for research, to look up facts, and to find old friends. I use it to keep track of my kids when they've moved out of the house. I use it for all kinds of things. I don't believe I know all the uses for it I've yet to think of, nor does Google itself.

Google would be much less useful to me if people had to opt-in their websites before they would show up in search.

I am sure there are many evil and nefarious ways that Google's search results have been used to hurt, destroy, and defraud. Maybe assassins have used it to track down information on their victims. Maybe stalkers have used it to get personal information on an innocent person. Perhaps businessmen have used it to find industrial spies or wiretapping gadgets.

Certainly there are many reasons to be annoyed by Google. I'f I'm selling a digital camera for $200, I can't be pleased when Google easily reveals the contact information for 23,847 people selling the same model for less. If I post something mean about my boss, I'd be chagrined to learn a co-worker found it on Google and e-mailed a URL to my boss. My daughter was annoyed to find out I'd checked out her Facebook profile--discovered via Google. I myself am annoyed when I follow a Google link to a spoof site.

Instead of banning Grid Shepherd or taking a virtual trip to Sheep Island to opt-out of ESC's scanner, to opt-out of most search engines (including Google) I have to put the html tag "< M E T A NAME="ROBOTS" CONTENT="NOINDEX">" on all my web pages. Unlike ESC's search engine, I couldn't find a way to opt-out on Google's search page. Worse, preventing my web pages from being indexed in the future has no affect on what has already been scanned in the past; Google doesn't go through and delete any existing links to pages just because I tell its robots to stop indexing them.

If I want privacy on the web, I have to resort to password-protected access, html code, and the like. In SL, it's much simpler using dialogue boxes to fine-tune access lists and parcel permissions.

Now, I think the current proposal to flood ESC's search page with lots of bogus results at L$0 is fine (as long as the price is L$0). It might be annoying to people shopping for cheap stuff, but I've already established my openness to being annoyed. At least it is voluntary and does not force other people to go along. In the long run, though, I expect we'll end up with SL search engines even more robust than ESC's current beta. That's because I see these activities in terms of Google rather than some cat burglar going through my closet.

Except for the SLexchange site

PS: Torley Linden loves the site and uses it daily so he says in the blog there, so they have LLs blessing it would seem.

Would you like a pair of sabots to throw into the machine as well?

Instead of complaing about ESC you should be complaing to Linden Lab for not providing this service years ago. Something myself and others have asked for many times. Electric Sheep would of never created this service if there was not a need for it.
The current search system is borked to say the least.

Then you should yell at the merchants who skew the system by placing things in the classifieds they don't even sell, in a odd hope you just might buy something if they can lure you in.

I do not believe this is as messed up as you claim. I have used it many times now with few glitches. (and yes I know a store when I see it and did not walk off with someones precious sex bed) It tells you where, how much, who made it and best feature of all where it is in the store.

The only real glitch I have found, It totatly passed by a friends store. I hope ESC keeps working on it and dosn't let a few paranoid luddites scare them off the project.

Rox

They do opt-in by choosing to PUBLISH web pages, that is putting them into a DIRECTORY MADE PUBLICLY ACCESSIBLE via an http server.

By design, every object of Second Life has to be made public (to reconstruct the world in the client's memory of every user). As we know, there is no possibility for a technically-enforced privacy. However we get some privacy by all agreeing on SOCIAL RULES, that is not entering representations of a private property. A human can recognize a representation of a private property. A robot can't. By making public what we all consider to be private, a robot is basically breaking social rules. A robot can index all objects and sell the data, aggregated or ot, to marketing companies. You will never know because «opt-in is so inefficient, guys, we choosed opt-out».

Considering Torley likely knows many of the participants in the company from pre-Linden Days - this isnt suprizing

I'm not sure where all these comments about there is no privacy in SL keep coming from.

True - there is no enforced privacy which isn't possible to be fairly easily bypassed - however in RL it is easy to walk on people's open gardens, use high powered telescopes to see into people's houses etc. That doesn't imply people should not have privacy in RL.

True - there is no police force in SL, but that doesn't mean that common decency should go out of the window. People are still morally entitled to privacy in SL.

Some choose not to use unsightedly ban lines or vehicle unfriendly security products to enforce their privacy out of common decency for others. Those others should perhaps show common decency in return. Whilst an opt in search engine ala ESC's offering would be fine, the current indiscriminate scanning of the entire grid (especially whilst it is still in beta) is a violation of the community standards, IMHO.

Most of the issue however revolves around originall items set for sale, as oppose to selling copy or contents. I would argue that in most cases those setting copies or contents for sale, wouldn't object to these being listed in a search engine, whereas there are lots of cases when you would want to set the original for sale without it appearing in a search. I don't know enough about the SL protocols but I would presume the client (and hence the bot) can tell the difference. A lot of aggro could be reduced if ESC only listed items which were selling copies or contents.

As for those genuinely wishing to sell off originals, there are still plenty of options (second hand stores in SL, slexchange, etc.) and ESC could always provide an opt-in for these.

Matthew

Which takes me back to the thourght that these few larger companies seem to have Linden backing, how many Lindens are on the staff or good friends with these company owners lol as ive said the idea is a great idea but the execution of the plan is that which i would expect from a second rate potential spamhaus or a second rate company intent on data mining at all costs and with no respect towards the populus, I am pleased Cory has been commenting and posting on this thread but as yet i have not seen any apologies etc. from ESC for doing it this way and i sincerely hope that they have done themselves enough damage in game to stop and take a look at it, but i doubt it, as its all about making as much money as they can and seem to have Linden backing, as Torley didnt post until after the first thread blew up and it started looking bad for ESC.

Trouble is now that i for one will not believe ESC in whatever they say now as they didnt care about people beforehand and if they start apologising now it will all be BS im sure but thats just my personal opinion based on many years online and the way data mining companies work, and we will never know for sure as all LL employess are under an NDA from the time they send the first email to you offering an interview, and LL are going to protect those companies that they see will help them as they grow that just makes good business sense in the same way ESC will never tell you the truth about this dam bot.

Honesty seems to be a thing that most of these companies, including LL are lacking in or perhaps they just dont understand the word and its meaning.

Peace

Oddly enough we were warned of this long before anyone made a bot, or before LL ever showed any overt favortism for any third party. We just thought the messenger was a crack pot.