Automated Burglary

me thinks you have not seen enough of SL bugs and many items become magically for sale or change permissions or textures flip among many other things due to all kinda crazy bugs, rollbacks, upgrades, maintenance fixes etc

So i'm assuming you have never had an object in a box (found several the other day) suddenly become no perms they became that were and I was unaware of it until someone bought the item which i had double checked and triple checked for bugs over and over again and found the permissions had changed

or the fountain i bought that magically set itself forsale one day at christmas time for the price i bought it at

or the script which i had written for a vendor which one day worked and the next day suddnely didn't work and I open it up to find half of it is gone and its looking like a half written version saved 3 weeks before

In SL anything is possible ...

If you aid a thief in stealing, you are a thief, it is as simple as that.

Judge: Sorry Mr. Satyr but Ms. Pascale's home looks like a residence to me. It is a two story log cabin home with doors and furniture. Ms Pascale was not home when youentered without permission or used a scripted device to access her property. You took something that blonged to her, without her permission, even though she may have erroneously left a price tag on it. Its clear to me home is not a commercial establishment. It is also clear, given the ban lines around it that she does not regard her home as a public place. I also find it significant that you made to attempt to restore the chairs to Ms. Pascale, even after being asked to do so. Verdict is guilty. Sentancing is next tuesday, this courtroom at 8:30.

I am sure there are beta search engines being released on the internet that index my website without me opting in. I am about as upset about that as I am about this search bot in SL.

Brenda, I'm more concerned with what ESC will do than with what they did. 20/20 hindsight is easy; forethought is a lot harder. ESC may have been unaware of the practice of using the "sell" button to transfer property. With complex new things, it's very difficult to foresee all the consequences.

I'm still waiting to hear what they plan to do to mitigate the consequences, but I'm only looking at two threads. However, one participant in the other thread actually contacted them; let's see what happens from that.

And I think I'm just repeating myself now, so maybe it's time for me to back off.

Is anyone aware of any Linden effort to Regulate Bots at all?

(Other than Copybots, of course. )

I thought they were called "rappers"?

I'm just surprised this discussion is now at 41 pages. I figured it would have ended with "if you don't want your stuff bought then don't mark it for sale".

If the guy that bought it finds out it was a misunderstanding and decides to make a profit from it, then they're a jerk, not a thief!

In RL, the "Right to Privacy" is tenuous at best. Even the courts in the US all the way up to the Supreme Court struggle with it on a fairly regular basis. In other places, you're lucky if you have privacy in your own thoughts.

In SL, there is NO guarantee or "right" to privacy. LL can observe everything about you at any time, and you agree to it as part of your acceptance of the ToS. Further, your privacy with respect to "everyone else" is VERY limited and is "protected" by only a handful of scantily-enforced rules in the CS document.

Some of the reasons are technical. There is a significant technical barrier in providing some kinds of "privacy", simply because of computational infeasibility, or algorithmic inflexibility. Other reasons are sociological. LL wants to have a fairly cohesive and engaging world, not a bunch of disconnected islands where there never is any traffic, except by the owner. Of course, they allow such, for a significant fee, so if you REALLY want as much privacy as you can get, you can just get a sim, deny public access, and live out the rest of your Second Life in utter privacy and seclusion.



Works for me. I *DETEST* Blizzard for similar reasons, and they will NEVER EVER get another penny from me for as long as I live, and I spread my rationale (or, rhetoric, if you prefer) to anyone willing to listen. There's nothing wrong with that view.

One thing that was mentioned that people don't realize is that "opt-in" for marketing tools is VERY hard to make work. That's why marketing companies are so adamant about making things "opt-out", and the government supports this notion in RL. That's why there's a National Do-Not-Call list, rather than a National It's-OK-To-Call-Me list. Personally, I would prefer the latter, as I *HATE* telemarketers, but I can live with the situation as it is now.

As a result, it makes more sense for them to go the route of "opt-out" to launch their indexing engine. Technically, there was nothing wrong with the concept of the bot or the index, and it sounds like they are making the attempt to give easy ways for people to opt-out, but only time will tell. I neither support nor decry it. The specific issue caused here is due to an anomaly in the "set item For Sale" system, where it is used for something which it was NOT intended. As a result, people are getting burned by the abuse of the mechanism, which is simply exposed by the service, not caused by it, as many seem to want to imply by demonizing it and ESC.

Hi Talarus, I was the original poster that this happened to, so I would like to take you up on a few points in your post, and clarify some things.

You are using RL definitions of theft, and RL analogies. For these arguments to be valid, you must be willing to accept RL counter-arguments, I hope you would agree with me on this point.

First of all, in RL, there are several types of sale. Sale by Private Treaty, Public Sale, etc. If I agree to sell my car to you, because you are my relation, friend, work colleague, whatever, then that confers no right on anyone else to purchase that item. That is a sale by private treaty, and you leave this out of your argument completely, as if it doesn't exist.

However, if I do advertise an item for sale, by public sale, that does not give anyone the right to enter my home, if I am not at home, to buy that item. This is also missing from your RL analogies. It is called trespass, and the fact that there is an item in the house for sale does not confer any right to anyone to enter your home while you are out.

Furthermore, no-one is allowed to rummage through your house, while you are not there, and uninvited, to look to 'see' if any items are for sale.

The nearest RL analogy you can get to here, is for me to agree to sell an item to my friend, and not tell anyone else, for someone to bug my home to learn of this (no-one can see any 'For Sale notice, as the item is inside my home, not in my yard or on my porch), post that information on a website, and someone then reads that, comes round to my home, while I am not there, finds a window or door unlocked, leaves the amount that I agreed with my friend on the table, and takes away the grand piano for US$1. I think you can see how many RL laws would be broken here.

Try thinking about this scenario (and this is with humor . A store has a special offer in the window. Brand New Washing Machine, US$50, including delivery. A chap walks in, and buys the machine. While the sales assistant is taking his CC details, a second guy walks in, and pays a second assistant in cash (who does not know that his colleague has already sold the item). While that assistant is ringing up the cash in the till, a third guy walks in, and gives cash to a third assistant, and tells him that there is no need to deliver, as he has his own van outside. The guy puts the machine into his van, and goes inside to use the toilet before his long trip home. A passer-by, seeing that the machine is set for sale at US$50, as the buyer had not taken the sticker off yet, thinks, that's a bargain, opens the door of the van (left unlocked), leaves $50 on the seat, and moves the machine from the first van to his own. Question: Who owns the washing machine?

But back to the case in hand. This happened in SL, not in RL, so I think that trying to use RL definitions and analogies will always fail, and i hope you now agree with me on that. In SL the only 'Law' is the CS and the TOS, both of which are loose, poorly policed, and where there are no consumer rights, trade bodies, or any mechanisms by which commercial disputes between residents can be addressed, as LL have made this point time and again that they will not interfere in these kind of matters.

So, in the absence of SL 'laws' to cover commercial dealing, we are alone in this (as this is probably one of the biggest threads ever in SL, don't you find it telling that there is not one Linden response?) So, I am just as entitled to call what happened to me 'burglary' as you are to say it is not. It is my definition, based on how it felt to me at the time. It felt to me the way it did because in the absence of laws I rely on my in-built codes, my morals, my ethics. I know I would never tp directly into someone's home in SL, to buy something. If I tped somewhere, and it was apparent that it was a private home, I would have tped right out again. I would not have looked around to find the item. If I saw a L$14,000 sexgen bed on the ESC website at a special offer of L$12,000 I would be tempted to pick up a bargain. If it was set at L$0 I would assume a mistake or error, and not try to purchase it. But those are just my values.

But to be fair to you, I also made the 'mistake' of assuming that RL definitions and standards (which you have relied on in your rebuttal) applied, and that this sale by private treaty between my manager and myself, and which was not advertised (and by that I mean that neither of the two parties informed anyone else of this sale), and which items were in a private home, would have been safe. I could not foresee sheepbot, as much as no-one foresaw landbot, copybot, or indeed the nest bot (if anyone does know what the next bot is, please do tell. Hindsight is a wonderful thing when people are told how 'stupid' they were) [general comment].

Had the ESC bot scheme been known to me, and what the implications were, I would have had to stop the practice of buying my goods back from the managers who lay it out for my when they furnish my homes for me. This in itself would have had adverse consequences for me in terms of costs, time, and resources.

The purpose of my post was to bring this to wider attention, so that others would not lose out in the same way that I did. Behind the scenes I have been campaigning for changes in the CS and TOS, changes to the For Sale / Buying mechanism (the ability to sell to a named buyer, as is the case with land, would be a useful start), liaising with other Estate Owners, employed a software consultant of our own, and introduced several counter-measures. The Grid Shepherd has now been banned not only from our Estates, but from the biggest estate in SL, and many others now.

I am glad that this problem has received the attention it deserved, and if I am the only one to have lost because of sheepbot, then that in itself is a good result. I do not like the way some posters have flamed and insulted each other over this issue, or any issue in the forums. Tolerance of other people's point of view, and lively, but tempered debate, is what will keep the forums thriving.

I think it is time for this thread to close now, as both sides of the argument have been well-aired now. Of course, I would not want to have the last word, so Talarus, please respond if you wish, but I would ask that all other posters now leave this topic, and concentrate on other issues in the forums that have not received the attention they deserve.

Time for my cocoa and biscuits

I know of a successful OPT-IN marketing tool, where people choose to list items they want to sell, at no cost. Can you say....SLBoutique?

this notion that Opt in is doomed to fail is a myth. If people want to let people know about things they have for sale, there is already a mechanism in place for that, owned by the people making this bot. So the only conclusion one can reach is the purpose behind it must have nothing to do witih the sale of items. Despite what they say, it will eventually be used for "Something Else". Only time will tell what that is.

I will agree that the system should prevent anyone from buying objects from a parcel they're banned from.

If I did not have permission it would not have been possible to buy the item.

I may have not been the intended purchaser, but if I can kill Ms. Pascale's avatar on harm enabled land... and not be accused of murder, then I can certainly buy something from her that she deliberately and knowingly marked for sale... without it being called theft.

Engaging in risky behavior due to limitations of the system is no excuse to assign blame on a third party.


Secondlife has a very diverse population.
It is UNREASONABLE to expect all residents to respect similar notions of privacy and property.
Therefore we must take individual action to protect ourselves against the minority that have no respect or, through ignorance or difference of perception/understanding, act in a seemingly disrespectful way.
Perhaps, some day we may have better protections and transfer mechanisms.

Well, the Lindens did say that using Copybot to copy items that aren't yours was against the TOS.

coco

The Do-not-call-list never existed until Community Groups forced it into existence. We do not have to mirror the mistakes of RL in the name of Virtual Big Business.


"It makes more sense" (?) After all of the arguments against this device to assist people steal you still say it makes sense. Amazing.


Most members of the ESC are players that started in 2003 and 2004. They are well aware that Linden Lab did not develop any other way to transfer items after being placed. And they released this abusive device knowing this.

And they can rely on real law and the DMCA to back them up on that where their own jurisdiction fails.

That doesn't apply in terms of indexing because references to content is created, not copies of the content itself. Those references, arguably, belong to esc, despite the fact they refer to content not owned by them. DMCA doesn't protect against that.

Nor does it protect against disclosing the whereabouts and whenabouts of avatars.

Or (adding to Wilhelm's comment here) my Fly Settee for Two which is a freebie included in the Froggie Bachelor Pad which somehow got set (set itself?) for sale to $30 when I put it in my rezzing thing.

The individual bought it, rezzed it, and put the Fly Settee for Two on the porch of his treehouse.

It was marked for sale at $30, but grayed out. (And is non-transfer.)

Then it was listed on the ESC site, as for sale by him for $30. I clicked on the ESC site and was taken directly to this treehouse, where indeed, the Fly Settee set amid his other personal belongings.

coco

double post

I, for one, have pretty much exhausted my arguments about ESC, the shhep bot and those who misuse it. I think we're pretty much divided into two camps - those who think its allright and those that don't. Despite vigorous arguments both pro and con, I don't think anyone's minds have been changed here.

I DO hope someone from ESC has been following the discussion and (a) realizes their invention has and is causing problems and (b) they correct it.

If I have offended anyone who has posted here [other than the ESC people, and the people who misuse their service] then I apologize. I mayhave been too cuaght up in my passions involving this sort of thing.

I don't expect anyone else to quit posting on this thread, just because I am.

One request. Let's go out there in both RL and SL and treat each other with kindness, decency and respect. Thank you one and all who listened to me, whether you agree with me or not.

Talaurus, thank you. I will defer to the technological limitations of making privacy, even if i don't understand them (I'm a Liberal Arts graduate , my degress are in History and Music ). But I don't accept the socialogical reasons. Second life is supposed to be Our world, Our imagination". I'm not anti social, I don't want to be sequestered somewhere alone. But I do feel I should be allowed to do that in my home, on my property , that I paid Real money for if I wish. That's all. I concede that the Lindens as the Owners of the world have thwe right to do whatever they say in the the terms of service, and they are free to modify that whenever they please. bringing RL concepts in to Sl is fine, but we don't have to abide by them just because they are there. That's why i come to SL, to escape the restrictions and limitations of RL. . And I still don't buy the Opt in isn't feasable argument. Yes most RL marketing scemes use this, but most don't include you without some action on your part. Again I ask, How can I opt out of something that I do not know exists? If this test went on without any hitches, it would not have been mentioned here at all.I still would be offended that I was included unknowingly.

For the screwdriver analogies. Yes you can't complain when you use a hammer to drive a screw. but when you use a screwdriver and it breaks at the handle, then the tool is defective. From what some of the more learned then me, the tools provided to safguard from the problems that started this are defective to a point. Will they be fixed?

On the aiding and abettig idea, I'm not sure on that. If I use a screwdriver , and break into a house, is the manufacturer guilty of a crime? I don't think so. Any tool can be defective, badly designed and misued. The issue is who is responsible, and what should be done about it?

Jeeze Louise, can't people READ?

I have said that IF ACCESS CONTROLS ARE USED, THEN it is improper. What part of this do you keep missing? I've said it at least 5 times already!

I don't CARE if it is considered "necessary" for certain kinds of builds, or has been in common practice since before Draco himself was a hatchling. IF you use it in a PUBLICLY-ACCESSIBLE location CARELESSLY, WITHOUT PROPER RISK MITIGATION, you deserve what you get. Period. You put the objects up for sale. People can come in and buy them. They get sold. Oops. Guess you need to read the part about RISK MITIGATION again, huh? A RL court judge would laugh the silliness right out of court.



What does this have to do with anything? OK, so you use a security orb. So what? DON'T PUT STUFF UP FOR SALE IF YOU DON'T WANT IT SOLD. Why is this such a hard concept? Secure your property. Put up a big sign that says "Yes, my stuff is set up for sale so I can transfer it to so-and-so; it is NOT available for purchase by anyone else, so don't buy it or you will be called a low-life thief and have halitosis and bad karma for the rest of your life!". Or maybe, just maybe, put the stuff up for sale FOR A REAL REPLACEMENT COST PRICE; then the issue is MOOT. Someone comes along and buys it. Fine! You go and get another one. OK, so let's say the item is a one-of-a-kind. If it is THAT important, transfer it directly, not using the "workaround", or be DAMN SURE you mitigate the risk of loss REAL well when you do transfer it using the FOR SALE method.



and this is wrong how? At the end of the day, it all boils down to this: WHAT can you have done about it when it happens? If LL says the same thing "transfer stuff like that at your own risk", all the whining and complaining and gnashing of teeth in the hundreds of pages of forum space is MEANINGLESS.



Well, I won't hold my breath waiting on any effective "ethical" or "legal" solution to the problem. Technical has the best chance; give you the screwdriver you need to avoid the problem. Banning for sale bots from the grid isn't going to happen. Asking ESC to radically change their service isn't going to happen.

Rule #1 for life in SL: Cover YOUR OWN tail. Also works in RL, too.



There are ways to do it. There are even ways to do it with minimal risk using the FOR SALE option. They aren't the best ways, nor are they the most convenient. See, that's another one of my pet peeves... people getting used to being lazy abusing a mechanism for expediency have little room to complain in my mind when they get burned for abusing it. It happens in RL, too. People park in no-parking zones to run in and get something from a store. People leave their carts in parking spaces because they are too effin' lazy to walk another 30 feet to put them away, which results in them rolling down the lot and dinging someone's door. I see the use of this mechanism in a similar light. It's a workaround; it has risks. Take responsibility for the risks, or do it the right way until such time as you get a better "right" way.



That's life; risk has a cost associated with it. Do it the right but more difficult way, or mitigate the risk of using a shortcut.



If the "victim" didn't do enough to mitigate his risks and make it plainly clear that the items were not meant to be sold, I can most certainly defend the BUYER.

I keep saying that it depends on the circumstances, but putting out sets of items FOR SALE in PUBLICLY-ACCESSIBLE places without any access controls, physical, visible, or otherwise, and no other notice of what was going on, I can understand someone buying them thinking that they are rightfully FOR SALE. I can see newbs doing it especially.

Look, all I am trying to do is to EDUCATE people and put the onus of responsibility where it belongs; ON THE SELLER, intentional or not. Yeah, it is kinda slimy for someone to literally break and enter into someone's home and take their stuff. While it may bring the BUYER's ethics and morals into question, it is STILL the responsibility of the SELLER, and it was his/her own hubris/ignorance which ultimately to blame. I'm not absolving the BUYER of his own moral shame in any way, but I am also not allowing the SELLER to escape ultimate responsibility for the mistake, either.

I CAN accept that if it happens to me. I don't know why anyone else can't.

I find it far more telling that there is no ESC response.

coco

Ah Rusty .. repeating myself again.

SL does not have a feature for "sell to individual"

Because of this, builders are often forced to use the "sell" feature.

If this weren't true, your argument would be valid. But it is. See Ceera's posts on this thread for an example. Another excellent example is the OP's.

Folks, the "sell" button is used for TWO purposes: sell to ALL or sell ot ONE

If LL fixed the underlying problem this would not be an issue. Meanwhile we have to deal with it as a community recognizing and solving the problem. If we don't, builders will have to charge significantly more because the hand-off process will be much more cumbersome. And those costs will mean either less content or higher prices.

Theft tends to raise costs for everyone.

Wow. Try reading the rest of the post. If you allow someone into your house, and leave a signed contract out for the lamp, and that person takes it, leaving you the amount you requested, completing the contract, then it most certainly is not illegal, and I CHALLENGE you to prove otherwise.

I agree wholeheartedly. And I agree that people who use the buy option need to be advised about the precautions they can take.

None of this excuses the reprehensible behavior of people who intentionally take advantage of the current situation, and any attempt to rationalize their behavior is ethically flawed.

Talarus, if that is all you were doing, I would not object.

But you consistently try to defend those who buy these objects. That is where I disagree with you. That is where most of us are disagreeing with you.

Don't be an apologist for thieves. Instead, just warn folks what is prudent, if that is your intent.

I also feel that ESC bears some responsibility, since they are abetting thievery. We disagree there too, but I agree that is an arguable point.

And you need to read the rest of the lawyer's post too: the point that it is not necesary to lock doors for taking something insde to be considered theft (even if it's marked for sale). Seriously: I feel that a similar situation in RL, if it came to court, would in the vast majority of circumstances, result in the "buyer" being forced to return the "bought" items.

"Burglar tools" (I assume you mean lockpicks) are NOT illegal to own in many states. They are illegal to USE, of course, unless you are licensed locksmith working by consent of the property owner.

It is no more a burglar tool than the Anarchist's Cookbook is a "manual for terrorists".



Then that makes two of us.