Automated Burglary

Zaphod these people that searched for (using this esc website) and found $0 priced items in a new, class 5 sim condo and took them are thieves. When they were caught and given the opportunity to return these items and they refused then they became assholes also.

Perhaps. Seller's remorse can result in all sorts of nastiness.


It's funny how what used to be "Buyer beware" has now become "Beware the buyer."

When the choice is you either sell or they shoot you, its not sellers remorse when you gather your people and shoot back.

Im kind of interested in what Coco brought up -

How do those in Support of the Searchbot feel about a spybot that tracks Avatar location and online status and posts it on a 3rd Party Website?

I'm not the one arguing in circles. I have been saying the same things since my first post.

It is NOT THEFT.

The owner SET IT FOR SALE.

Someone else BOUGHT IT.

If the seller didn't want it to be purchased, then he should NOT have set it FOR SALE, or should have taken more care to MITIGATE his RISKS in using the FOR SALE mechanism in a way which it WAS NOT INTENDED TO BE USED.

Setting an item out FOR SALE is a LEGALLY-BINDING contract as far as SL is concerned, and ANYONE taking advantage of it by purchasing the item is fulfilling his part in the EXPLICIT CONTRACT set out by the Seller.

Yeah the ESC tool enabled it the same way Google enables people to find stuff. By crawling the world and indexing what it finds.

You'll note that Google is opt-out as well. Wouldn't be much of a search engine if it was otherwise.

I have NEVER said that someone "swooping in" and buying something that obviously was not meant to be for sale is anything other than a cad, jerk, asshole, or whatever (assuming he knew beforehand, bought it anyway, and refused to sell it back). Everyone else here automatically goes THIEF!! THIEF!!! BURN HIM!!!! *I* DON'T. Not the least of the reasons being from the simple FACT above. It is NOT THEFT! PERIOD! The buyer who bought the items and then later returned them and got his money back wasn't a thief, yet everyone here keeps assigning that tag to anyone who buys something they weren't supposed to, regardless of the reasons why or any subsequent actions.

I tell you what, all that makes ME want to do is this: If I EVER buy something set out for sale, with NO other indication or hint that it wasn't meant to be purchased by me, and subsequently get called a thief, you better damn well believe I will be a LOT less likely to be willing to return it for ANY price and tell the seller to get stuffed as a result.

If the buyer exploited the system, then fine, he's a thief, and can be ARed as such. No exploits were involved in this situation, however.

There are no 'sellers' involved in this incident. As we established -setting items to $0 is the norm to transfer items that have been placed. Nothing was being sold. Items were being transferred using the ONLY method made available to us.

COULDN'T

CARE

LESS.

Oh dear. Here we go again. The items were for sale. Buying items for sale is not theft.

We're both going round and round on this. I get where you are coming from and you get where I'm coming from. I'll stop now.

Sometimes it's just The Chickens Coming Home to Roost. *not indicating that this is necessarily the case here*

So you have no opinion?,
or you mean you dont care if someone tracked you on a third party website?

I'll agree with Talarus here.. really couldn't care less. I'm not doing anything in Second Life that would warrant such a concern.

Well, it's interesting - I don't do anything in SL or in real life that could cause any concern - to anybody! It's an interesting way to live, really.

Yet - I wouldn't want anyone keeping tabs on it and publishing it.

coco

hmmm, what about people who do do things in Second Life that warrant such concern?

It does make sense if someone doesnt care about their location being tracked they wouldnt have a concern about who knows where their objects are though.

I guess the big disconnect is who gets to decide that for everyone else.

I'll tell you who gets to decide - the coders do.

And they know that.

(Just came fresh from that other thread about the Rolling Stone articke where Philip announced that code is law, and code is God.)

coco

I'll get some last words in here before Strife or Torley come along and politely state "I'll close this thread".

Second Life is an extremely open platform. The small bit of "privacy" language which exists in the Terms of Service and Community Standards documents speak mostly to real life information, and provide no protection whatsoever to the objects we have rezzed on our personal virtual property. I don't necessarily believe this is ideal, but this is indeed the way it is.


When you rez an object, and it is flagged as "for sale", whether you personally flagged it as such, or it was flagged as such -out of the box-, it is nevertheless "for sale". Expect that there is a possibility that someone may just come along and buy it, with or without the help of the sheep bot.


I still have a degree of sympathy for Rock, and what happened to him, however I also believe that he bears a fair amount of responsibility for what happened. It was an estate which was not ready for public consumption. There were precautions he could have taken which would have prevented this from happening, and he did not take those precautions. Therefore, some amount of responsibility belongs to him. There is no getting around this fact, no matter how much idealism one wishes to spin into this discussion.


The Electric Sheep Company had nothing but good intentions for this project. I am convinced of this after having had a rather lengthy conversation with Cory Edo. It truly would not have gotten off the ground if it were to have been opt-in from the beginning. It simply had to be done this way. I would again say that while folks over here are sharpening their pitchforks, folks over there are open to feedback which would help them tune the product into something useful for everyone. It's a bloody amazing idea, but it is still in the "proof of concept/beta" phase, and while I appreciate the call to remove it, or as Cory Linden would say, take it out behind the shed and shoot it, that's just not fair in this case. "Don't shoot me, I'm just the piano player"


As Second Life progresses, we're going to have to adapt. No amount of forum posts chanting and carrying on about how ideal things used to be is going to make a difference. It will progress, and it will move in the direction that Phil and Mitch and the rest of the board members want it to move in. For many, this may be unfortunate. Even some who have been here a long while. But it will proceed in the prescribed direction, and there is nothing any of us can do to stop it.


Cheers, and peace to all

-Zaphod

Ive been told im not allowed to resent that

This could be taken an awful lot like "If you dont like it, it doesnt matter becuase your opinions dont matter"

This is the sort of attitude that leads to sucessful competitive ventures.

In my opinion?

Linden lab took way to freaking long to implement the ability not to tell every single person on our friends list every single time we log in our out.

I have no doubt that third party tools will jump in to undo much of what was won with that change.

Do I care? Yes, a little. Am I worried? Not particularly.

People that end up using a 3rd party tool to find out when I'm online or not... or to map me when I prefer to be unmappable... will be encouraged not to do so again. And if they fail to take the hint, ban lines and mute will follow.


edited in after thought: And for stuff I don't want tracked? I'll *coughcough* use an alt.

I want to say you're wrong. (You may never know how much respect you earned from me with your "not the problem, it's a symptom" post... )

But ultimately you're right... and not just your opinion... but most of our opinions, maybe all of them, don't matter really.

One of my favorite quotes from Kosh, on Babylon 5: "The avalanche has already started. It is too late for the pebbles to vote."

Competitive ventures will arrive someday. They'll repeat some mistakes, and in an effort to avoid some of secondlifes major failings, they'll undoubtedly sweep on to create great new and likely as objectionable gaffs as well. Having the chance to pick a world best tailored to our preferences would be nice.

For now we have this one.

i have to agree with you on this. Except if i get tracked when i prefer not to be, i will abuse report them as a add on to what you would do. ;p And i would add them to my enemy list on my psitec.

So be it. Maybe I'll see you "there", maybe I won't.

I'm obvioously not in Support of the Searchbot, but I'll vote anyway:

It is a wet dream for griefers. And the harder-core the greifer, the wetter the dream.

Whatever are people thinking?

Heya Rock.

I'm sorry I'm participating in the "blowing out of proportion" of your original thread. I know you were frustrated by what happened, and I agree that it sucks. FWIW, you have my sympathies, up to a point, as I have described elsewhere.



Well, I will consider them, to be sure. I'll debate them on the same relative merits as any analogy, since that was the original point in referencing RL as I felt it pertained to SL under similar circumstances.



That's simply because this type of sale (for objects, anyway) does not presently exist in SL, insofar as the object "for sale" mechanism allows. If you want to sell by private treaty in SL, you give your money to the seller and he gives you the product. That's the way vendors tend to work.



That's correct. However, if you left a note on the door, granting access or, in the case of SL, where there are no "trespass laws", and you do not use the provided method which is access control, to enforce your wishes, then it becomes a lot more difficult to make that case.

For the most part, the world of SL is considered "public access" "except where it is not", as enforced by access controls. The ToS does not cover anything related to "trespassing", unless it is a vehicle for other proscribed activities. Residents are allowed to go anywhere they can (and are generally encouraged to explore by LL), except as specifically prevented via the access controls. Landowners are encouraged to use the access control tools to effect their wishes with regards to privacy and trespassing.

The Real World is just the opposite. Unless otherwise noted, all property is considered private, and you are subject to trespassing, unless you are not.



That's true in RL. In SL, it is generally frowned upon, but there is no specific "rule" against going into someone's home and looking around, again, because the landowner has the tools necessary to effectively prevent it (except for camera tricks; which I will defer for later). It is presumed by LL that, if you did not want people rummaging around in your home, you would simply deny them access. I know folks go through my mainland home all the time when we accidentally leave the access controls open for some reason. While I might feel a little uncomfortable about it, it doesn't really bother me as much as it bothers my mate. Mainly because I know there is little to nothing anyone can do. If I leave something in my SL home which is set "for sale", and someone buys it, I wouldn't be bothered too much. Either I intended it, or I was dumb and left it set that way by mistake; MY mistake. My bad.



Yes, I can agree to that, but in the situation in SL, where "private property" is only that which is enforced by access controls (or maybe by covenant with the sim owner, but that's a different ball of wax), the analogy changes. The world itself tells everyone within earshot (who knows how to listen/look) that your object is for sale. It isn't just for sale to your friend, but for sale to ANYone; the mechanism doesn't provide a means to specify that it was only meant for your friend. Your home in SL isn't truly private unless you set the access controls to make it that way. Further, if there is no real way to be sure that it IS actually a "private residence" (as I have said before, some folks have stores in their homes, and actually do sell items from within an unmarked residence), someone *may* make the assumption that it was OK to buy your piano for L$1. They might think it is a "freebie" or "cheapie" that someone didn't mind sharing with everyone who happened by. I have occasionally set out freebies in my home for my own use which were set "for sale" for $0 or $1, because that is how they came to me set as. Things like tipjars, online status indicators, even some furniture and poseballs. I wouldn't care if someone bought them (though they are set to sell copy, not original, but the point remains that they were still for sale).

As such, that is one case where the RL and SL analogy breaks down.



That's a good question. In general, the old cliche "possession is 9/10ths the law" probably would apply, but only up until it was moved onto/into private property. Thus once it was in the van, it was "owned" by that party. The first two buyers would have to get their money back (or some other form of satisfaction) from the store, and the fourth chap could be considered a thief, because he removed the washer from private property. Translating the situation to SL is a tad difficult, since the "for sale" mechanism is conferred based on the current owner. As such, even the third "owner" could be considered the "seller" and the fourth person the legitimate "buyer" and final owner, if he was not otherwise prevented from making the purchase due to access controls on the van, or the third owner doing due diligence to remove the "for sale" setting on the washing machine. Forunately, the concurrency issues in RL do not apply to SL. When you purchase an item, it becomes yours immediately; there's no waiting around with the potential for someone else to come by and buy it away from you while you are arranging "payment".



My point in using a RL situation to analogize the SL situation was to illustrate a specific point; not really to say that SL should operate like RL, or vice versa. I use definitions of words to convey proper meaning, and that is important whether we are talking SL, RL, or even Wonderland. That's the point of semantical communication protocols, so that everyone gets "on the same page" and resolves ambiguity in the discussion.

I definitely agree that the "world of SL" is radically different than the "real world" in how it is managed, policed, and even used by the residents. Everyone has their own ideas as to what they want from SL, and what they expect of their fellow residents. Some of it is valid and/or realistic; a lot of it isn't. Some of it is downright whacked.



Not really. LL has abandoned these forums for some time now. It speaks to nothing other than their apathy with the communication medium, and nothing to this topic in particular.

That was the opinion.

I don't care if someone tracked me on a third-party anything. There's literally NOTHING I do in SL which is so private that I expect any kind of privacy that I cannot obtain through the provided mechanisms, or go outside of SL to accommodate any further need for privacy.