Automated Burglary

Well, yes and no. List the contents of prims? Yes. List the contents that are actually being sold? No, that depends on the script, and the bot isn't going to be able to read the script, much less understand it.

How could the bot determine whether a prim with contents was meant to be a "vendor"? It couldn't. That is something that only a proper human being can decide based on appearance, setting and so on. A bot which went around cataloguing the contents of everything on the off-chance that it thought it was a vendor would be an immense invasion of privacy and also, pretty rubbish for the given task. Some sort of metadata would need to be introduced - necessarily on an opt-in basis, unless common vendor names are scanned - for this sort of data gathering to produce meaningful results.

I only made it to about page 15 I think, but just wanted to make one quick note.

Those of you who are going to refuse to use SL Boutique in the future, please be aware that ESC no longer takes a commission from the sales, so the only people you are hurting with your SL Boutique ban are the merchants. And most of them probably dont even know about this whole debacle.

Believe it or not, very few people actually read the forums. I know shocking isnt it!

Catt

True. But though SLB does not charge merchants a percentage of sales any more, they still profit from the ad revenue and ad click-throughs on their site. And if merchants in general remove their merchandise from SLB, that will directly have a negative impact on Electric Sheep Co profits.

I am still on the fence myself about removing my own store from SLB. I've been there almost since I started as a merchant. I don't get much in the way of sales there, but it's a little something each month. And it costs me nothing to maintain a presence there. Seriously considering closing shop there and moving to SLX instead. What I do will depend, I suppose on how ESC handles this in the long run. For now, I will wait and see.

Notes the distinct absence of any comment from The Sheep, wonders why they'd let their PR get so out of hand here, and expresses surprise that the formerly communicative SLB has chosen the "Way of the Lindens".

Probably the same reason that we almost never see LL around the forums - too many people that are willing (to the point of being eager) to believe that they're evil and out to screw the community.

I will use the same merchants...I will just shop at their in world sites. And your point of how few read the forums rings true. How many don't have any idea of this, can't opt out, or mark their personal posessions in their home Not For Sale?

There is nothing unreasonsble about not wanting to be automatically scanned by bots belogining to other residents.

Suppose the Steam Bovine Company were to install the same scanning technology that instead of looking at items for sale were to listen on chat channel zero and log it, cross-index it, and publish it to a third party site with limited access?

Would this be an equivalent intrusion? Could you tell if it was happening right now? Of course, such an action would violate the spirit - if not the letter - of the ToS, but would be fairly untraceable and would have pretty dire implications as to how people interact. Can one assert that no such thing is running? Do I need a tin-foil hat? Is this an in principle inquiry as I'm not in-game any more?

Not true.

I sell clothing using simple prim based vendors. I accept that I might be somewhat unusual or eccentric, but it works for me and I have had no complaints.

Oh and I checked the ESC search engine and it lists my items just fine.

Thats kind of the thing - Isnt it. They can do that. I imagine the supportors of the searchbot want to draw the line somehwere after Objects. I want to draw the line before Objects.

/119/58/178438/1.html

In another forum I noticed this ad. Think of how much more effective this agency would be with spybots monitoring conversation and Avatar comings and goings.

Avatar comings and goings would be pretty marketable as well - you could find out where they shopped , "listen" to the vendor chat, etc. to find out what they buy ...

Well, do you remember all the hubbub about the SL Stats thing? Is that what it was called? I can't remember. I am referring to the watch or whatever that tracked the avatars that you come into contact with, and how long you are online, etc.

I don't want to get too off-topic by bringing up another hotly contested thing (and I am not stating my opinion of that particular one in any way) except to demonstrate that what you are worried about is all possible without bots, and is likely being done by someone already. Possibly even by someone who isn't going to just tell you that because they don't want it to be common knowledge.


.

Against the community standards:

Community standards are part of the TOS:


Yes, I know some people are willing to share logs and info outside the SL forums, but I'm pretty sure that's still against the TOS.

The fact that non bots can do it is secondary. Non-bots could do this searchbot thing. The bot automates and compounds the problem

And just becuase it might be happeneing and we cant stop it so why try - isnt a good reason to stop making an effort.

The "Your gonna die anyway so why bother going on living" was never an effective argument to me.

This is why I think the Community standards need expanded on. The part that applies to what your saying is 2 sentences long.

I think it should be expanded to include tracking your objects and your online habits.

And just becuase its against the TOS doesnt matter its not done. But it at least protects you from legitimate businesses.

As the botification of SL continues, I'm reminded of this line from The Fly:

"I'm an insect who dreamt he was a man and loved it, but now that dream is over and the insect is awake."

For some people, I think you can substitute "bot" for "insect" and you have what happens when people become too enamored with technology, without enough thought to the people it affects.

For me, though, the quote resonates in this way: I was a human in a human place and loved it, but now that dream is over and the bots are here.

coco

Non-bot scripts cannot do the search thing, but they can still do plenty of things that would worry people like you.

I didn't mean to say "so why try", I was just trying to make the point that it's already occurring with other means. So many people are talking about wanting to shut down Electric Sheep Company itself over this and destroy their business, when really they are not the ones to be most concerned about.



.

It isn't - it isn't "in Second Life" or "on the Second Life Forums". However, any remote monitoring of SL conversation clearly takes place "in Second Life" and would be against the ToS. If you used a chat bug to record a conversation and posted in a third party site, you would still (potentially) be liable for banning.

Whether it would happen or not is a different matter, but it's different to posting a legitimately-gathered chat log - i.e. you were there - in a third party location, which is definitely okay.

May I quote you for emphasis?

This really is the essence of the matter.

Has a linden confirmed that it's definately OK?
I suspect the original point was to cover posting the logs anywhere without consent, especially as it comes under the heading disclosure and the first line in the paragraph talks about privacy. The wording is a little muddled and could be argued either way as there is no mention of the use of 3rd party sites as being allowed or prohibited.
What would be the point of preventing posting in this forum but allowing it elsewhere though? It still breaches privacy and discloses that information.

http://www.archive.org/web/web.php

If you don't want it indexed, copied, saved, or used without your permission.. don't put it online.

http://web.archive.org/web/20020928101411/http://www.secondlife.com/

If you don't want it bought, don't put it up for sale.

I did a search for devpose (products I'm always hoping to find at flea markets), and found a few items underpriced listed there. I went to check them out, and they were gone (found a great $85 pair of boots at that flea market though)... then I noticed a few grossly overpriced devpose items out there.. seems some people are willing to have their beloved beds bought out from under them for 3x profit...

This is a very important point. By some of the arguments being made against ESCBot (I said it first) in this thread, Google should be banned from the Web, along with every other automated indexing system. (yahoo, msn, etc)

Well, I used the SheepBot, typed in my name and found................

Not a single item I actually sell. Not a single one of the 66 different treehouses and prefabs I've made and put up for sale in my stores. No surprises there, eh?

So what did I find? Mostly instances of people reselling a few of my freebies in a shabbly attempt to make a quick L$ from the unsuspecting. And one door on a treehouse in Serenity Woods that was accidentally set 'for sale' at 0L$.

Will the SheepBot help my sales? Nyetski, compadre.
Will the SheepBot help people hoover up items I accidentally set for sale at 0L$? You betcha!
Will the SheepBot catalogue all my worldly possesions in SL in the for of a list that could be sold on to nosey people? Without a doubt.
Will the SheepBot or others similar to it become a surveillance tool in SL? Probably already been happening since day one. The SheepBot brouhaha is where it all goes public.

Where exactly is this sheep-bot? I'm curious to do a search for any of my stuff, but I don't know the website.

ADDITION: Nevermind, I found it. How? I googled it. Irony?

now I want someone to program a bot, that throws random keywords at the search, and every time it finds a hit at $0, it goes there and attempts to buy the $0 item if it can locate it.

let that run for a few days, and see what it comes up with. could be interesting, no?

I was a little disappointed that all it found for me was my two old-box-vendors in Motorati, and a chair I had set for sale in my house. if it could read through JEVN (or other networked) vendors, that would be awesome. But I did notice I had underpriced the chair, and corrected it... and as stated before, I found an item someone was selling that erroneously listed me as creator.. that was kind of fun.

search.sheeplabs.com