Automated Burglary

Most parents think they have the most beautiful baby in the world.

Bot-makers are no exception. I've been one myself. (not here, yet, maybe some day).

Even the most benign, helpful, well-mannered, innocuous, leaves-you-alone-unless-you-go-find-it kind of bots get hated.

They're less than human. They're not a protected minority. They don't feel pain like we do. They don't have an immortal soul. They're not self aware. They're just bots.

Even humans with profound learning disorders get shown compassion.

Bots get nothing but contempt.

And for people unable or unsuited for having real children, (or pets), it's either house plants or bots.

I may still, some day, raise an eKid in secondlife... but he'll stay home and know how to ban&eject abusers before he's left un-attended.

Now this line was what made your argumentation fall apart, of course bots don't have souls, but for the do we, its a matter of personal illusions/fate.

If you can establish some form of concensus on what constitutes "a reasonable expectation of privacy" and go after them for violating it... I will concede that's fair. Your case would be far stronger if you could get linden lab to buy into that definition of "reasonable expectation of privacy."

But as Colette eloquently pointed out, esc is a symptom... not the problem itself.

It would be better to tackle the problem directly, which, unfortunately, will require linden involvement.

It was meant tongue in cheek... but now that you mention it... bots can be re-incarnated into new bodies quite easily.

(zzz last post tonight)

No people blame an Automated bot for coming to their Private Island uninvited, unannounced and listing their objects that were "for sale" status, displaying them on a website with the Surl information, allowing Search bot users to buy a lot of objects not intended for the public.

The were unaware the searchbot existed and were working under pre-search bot habits. Their habits might have been riskier than they thought they were, but they had always been okay before.

Other people were unaware they had objects listed for sale, they thought they werent and had stuff bought from their home.

While some just have objections to this Bot for hows its implimented. And would object to any similar bot which disregarded the wishes of landowners. They also have Empathy for those who lost their property to this.

Now if that explaination still results in people being "stupid" You must admit with the bots help they became much more Publicly And advertized as "Stupid" then they were without the bots help.

That's a fine answer. I can't fault you for it. And I also agree with your agreeing with Colettes assessment.

Can anyone here tick the "for sale" box and edit the price/sell method quicker than a bot can scan and buy the original for 10L?

Can someone make a bot for me that can set things for sale faster than a bot can swoop and take it before it's priced correctly? That'd be handy.

With some illnesses you treat the symptoms not the cause.

The main problem with these things is not so much if its useful or not, its that they get abused and everybody finds out they have to change their behavior because of a horror story.

Whenever something arises that requires you to 'opt out' it begins to smell like a scam

Not every item marked for sale is for sale, and when something can scan your house and assume something is for sale, and somebody can just pop in and buy it, it just is not cool.

Sure
it should not be marked for sale
(but if its at 500m up and clearly in a house is this really for sale?)
and of course the person who is gonna buy it should be standing right there with their finger
twitching over their mouse.
(that does not make this any more fine and dandy.

Many people keep items in a stock room. If somebody purchases something from a stock room they could get an empty box, a template and then later they will wonder what happened. They dont know that this stuff is buggy and is not for sale.

The box was not in the store, it was not for sale, it was not ready for sale ect. Is something a bargin if its not ready? On sl when an object is not really ready for the sales floor it isnt exactly leaking or twitching

When you search for something on google you dont get a link directly inside someones computer to their desktop just because they may have something you reeeealy want unless you are the fbi

If this thing wants to be useful it will need to search only areas that have been designated AS A BUISNESS.

When SL updates we see the release notes (kinda) so we dont have new crap without at least a sideways peep.

If something is gonna search the entire grid for stuff, private islands and mainland and tickle all our crap it would be nice if we could sign up for it first. People like stuff more when they dont get introduced to it by someone who is p*ssed of because they were on the wrong end of a user

Amazing how the people who cry 'burglary' refuse to respond to the fact that the 'problem' the OP describes is grossly overstated. This bot doesn't cause anyone to 'swoop in' and instantly buy things out from under you when you are smart enough to only transfer items this way when the intended buyer is right next to you. It's a matter of logic: the bot coming by, scanning your items, listing them 'for sale' on a website, another resident finding the item in a database, TP'ing in, rezzing, and 'snatching'stuff, that all takes way longer than the intended buyer who should be right there takes to buy the same item. If your objects do get unintentionally bought, apparently you left them out for sale for a prolonged period of time. Leaving objects out for sale while not intending anyone to by them is careless, and always has been careless. Yes, the chance of your carelessness biting you in the ass has gotten bigger. But that doesn't stop this from being a matter of carelessness of the so-called 'robbed' person.



Your assumption people are 'copying' what they say is your problem. It prevents you from considering there might be a different reason why people are saying the same thing: because it simply is common sense that if you set out objects for sale, they might get bought. Don't want them to get bought? Don't set them out for sale.



I'm not so sure this didn't happen before. I think it is just as likely that when this happened before, people just (rightly) wrote of their loss as being the result of their own stupid mistake instead of whining on the forums about it. Now the same kind of people have a scapesheep, so they do whine on the forum about it. So much easier to whine if you have someone or something to point the accusing finger at, whether your accusations are valid or not.

No, but that can only happen if the bot (i.e. just another avatar) is within scanning range. This is not like botched land sales, where the land price is advertised in-world instantly, giving bots the opportunity to know the land is for sale at a ridiculously low price and TP in faster than you can click to correct. In this case the bot actually has to be there to even know the object is for sale at 10$L for that split second. To be on the safe side I do think it would be a good idea if you could set the price of an object before actually ticking the 'for sale' box.

By the way, I do hope we are all aware of the fact that this is a theoretical question about bots: the sheep bot does not buy items, and you can certainly edit the price faster than it takes for the bot's scan results to get published and another person to TP in.

How about in a locked building or inside what's obviously private property?

The original problem here is that there isn't a better method for the reason the "sale for $0" was used in the first place. This is a VERY common practice, or at least it WAS, and the existence of this bot means that builders will have to find a newer (and much more cumbersome) process for transferring builds to customers.

I've seen several folks above toss out oversimplified and worthless workarounds. Has anyone found a really good one? The only one I can think of is to set each item for sale at well above it's actual value, and transfer money to cover the payments.

I've built things for other people, and using "allow edit my objects" is helpful but not sufficient. There are some operations only the owner can do dispite this setting. And the owner still has to leave a huge supply of blank prims for the builder to use as raw materials. Worst of all, you can't use shift-drag to copy and replicate structures. You also have problems with any automated builders you may have -- if they're owned by you they create objects owned by you. And you may not want to transfer ownership to the customer. (Many tools only work when operated by owner, so unless you're also a scripter ... well, forget it.)

There is a serious problem here, and ESC is exacerbating it. Anyone who tosses this off as the OP's fault doesn't know much about how things actually get done in SL. And they end up being apologists for grifters.

If you swoop into private property and purchase anything that's set for sale at well below the market value, in a place where it is obviously private property and not a market or garage sale, then you are a thief. The fact that SL doesn't prevent this thievery doesn't make it any less than that. It's little different than if you walked into an unlocked home and started taking things -- and blame the owner for failing to lock the door.

It is different in one respect: you won't get busted for it. However, the transaction will be in the owner's history, and I would encourage them to find ways to repay you for your kindness, if after being contacted that it was a mistake you don't return the property. (Because, of course, there will be honest mistakes in these cases -- easily rectified by returning the property.)

And when the "doctors" are part of the cuase? What do we do then?

Suzy, you're right that the bot is not the thief. The bot is simply advertising easily stolen property. So, it's aiding and abetting, rather than the prime culprit. I see it as similar to Napster, which set up a process for gross larceny. The people who wined about that were the people who wanted something for nothing.

No doubt it happened on a small scale. But now there is a tool that makes it easy for theives to find easily stolen property. I'm sure that was not the intent of the tool and I don't mean to blame ESC for the problem in the first place. I realize now that my comparison to Napster above was overly harsh: Napster was intended to promote theft; whereas I'm confident that ESC was not, and I appologies for using much too broad a brush.

The unfortunate fact is that the sheep bot does help a certain class of thief, and for this reason ESC does bear some responsibility in trying to mitigate the problem. Meanwhile, this is a burden on builders all over SL.

Electric sheep wasnt promoting theft.

They did, however, delibrately decide that all people would be included in their listing whether they wanted to be or not. They required residents to actively request to not be included in their listing.

Most of those included dont/didnt even know they were.

There is still no way short of banning the bot out of range of your objects to opt out of it snooping around your objects though.

The Results of this of course aided thieves. (whatever you want to call snooping bargain hunters in people's bedrooms)

Not intentionally, but that is the result.

Some people posting here have expressed privacy concerns about persons who have objects they don't want other people to know about. For some people that might be a very legitimate concern. I hope any folks in that position reading this will take the time to go to edit>more>general and change the name and description of all their objects to something neutral and opaque, like "table," or "chair," or "none," or "death to searchbots." You don't have to look in General to know what it is, after all, and Nosy Parkers with searchbots or access to "search" websites don't have to know at all.

Dah-yup. Dah-yup. Silly me, Everyone knows that people can and WILL TP and buy any object anywhere they want. It’s what you’re supposed to do in SL, isn’t it?

And I’ve seen that happen soooo often in SL. I can’t remember how many times I’ve been standing and just talking to a client about the house I’m building for her, and suddenly someone TPs right into the middle of us and starts right clicking like mad.

Or the time I was at a wedding in SL, and someone suddenly TPed into the middle of the ceremony and started right clicking everything in sight, knowing full well that someone had foolishly left an item for sale at $0.

Or last summer, at Band Camp…

Please don’t nitpick the example because the searchblot is too slow for someone who has no idea that the item they have rezzed is set for sale. If they don’t know it’s for sale, the searchblot has all the time in the world. Very soon this blot will have the ability to swoop in and buy items as fast as a landblot. Certainly a techie-apologist like you would guess someone is working on it.

If you knew this all along, that people have some SL right to come buy things out of your home, your studio, your private skybox, then you should start IMing the rest of SL immediately. I’m certain not everyone is aware of this and you would certainly be a big help to the half-brained like myself.

This techie attitude that civility, ethics and morality are just byproducts from lack-of-programming skills or no knowledge of SL exploits turns my stomach.

Oh, and anyone with half a brain should always use Spell and Grammar Checks.

I wonder if thats partially becuase Technically minded people focus on Math, programing, computer education.

And many lack any sort of Liberal Arts background and formal training in civility, ethics and the reasons for them.

A couple clarifications.

1) The bot does not swoop in a buy stuff, nor will it ever. Its sole function in life is to locate items marked for sale, and index them.

2) Your characterization of techie attitudes is both incorrect, and offensive. Some of us support this project, but certainly not in its current form. I've said oft enough that I appreciate the problems it has caused, and I sympathise. It can be made better, and I suspect it will be, but I am steadfast against the call to arms against ESC and the search engine, and the lynchmob mindset.

Their parents should have taught them before they even started school. There is never an excuse for rude or uncivil behavior.

Read again. I have not condoned the ethics of people buying things that are not intended for sale and then keeping them or selling them back at igh price. That is not something I would do, and it is not something I think is okay. But the fact this happens is no more the sheep bot's fault then it is Google's fault when spammers find your email adress



Once more: read again. I was responding to the suggestion that something that was momentarily set for sale would be 'snatched'. That doesn't happen with smart transactions



I had no idea I was a techie-apologist. I am just not paranoid. A bot is essentially an avatar. Landbots can swoop in so fast because land for sale is automatically advertised. That information is readily available to avatars. The fact you have an object for sale is not, a bot has to actually come by and scan the object. So for now I think we are safe from imaginary bots swooping in and buying 10$L items meant to be priced differently. That may change in future.



Wow, you're really touchy on that subject. Did I hit a mark?



That attitude also exists only in your mind. I never condoned that behaviour. I just don't blame the sheep bot for it, and I am smart enough to know there are people out there who lack my sense of ethics and who will do things I wouldn't. So yes, in RL I lock my doors and I don't leave valuables in my car. And in SL I don't set out things for sale that I don't want to get bought. Both in RL and in SL I too will make the occasional mistake. But just like in RL I don't blame the manufacturer of flashlight for the burglar being able to see after he walks in my open front door, I don't blame the sheep bot for making objects that are for sale more visible.



For a non-native English speaker I think I am doing pretty well. Can you do better in Dutch? I'll even supply you with a good Spell and Grammar Checker if you think that would help.

Thats mainly true of the Electric Sheep Bot - Although you left out it that for Opt In people it find ALL their objects, not just those for sale.

Buying bots might exist in the future - It would be nice if we had some sort of better system (on the LL side) in place before this happens.



Some of us have more of a problem with the Attitude reguarding privacy and not being asked if we want included in this Bot search than whether this bot "works". I persoanlly find that attitude, projected by many - offensive.

Firstly: I'm majoring in Philosophy.

Secondly: Even though this statement is obviously not about me, I have the civility to recognize it as an insult to good people not even participating in this discussion and calling you on your bad manners.