Automated Burglary

There are some flowers in my bedroom which the creator apparently set to be resalable by the purchaser. It certainly never occurred to me to check my items for such a thing and, sure enough, they showed up on the ESC site. I have to assume this is true for others.

This would have the effect of hiding all the free stuff made available to noobies by those who have made their creations freely available for the good of the SL community.

Shut it down!!!




Ah, and why are things on my parcels listed _after_ banning the bot?

I do not want to be there and I did not ask you to be there!!!

So I do not want to Opt-Out as you have been never allowed to put me or my parcels there.

CLOSE it down - NOW!!

Cannot anybody give the sheeps some brain?

Bibi

I'm pretty sure people have always been able to buy objects set for sale if they pay the price that has been specified.

I had thought most of us were in agreement that, even if not theft or a violation of the TOS, purchasing items not really intended for sale was poor form.

But now people are calling for an organized mass search-and-buy mission?

Yes, they really do need to keep the $0 stuff up there if they continue with this site. I have some items at my store set for sale at $0 because I got ticked off at all the people who are selling freebies for hundreds of Lindens. I set them for sale at $0 instead of free to copy so I can track numbers, because if there's not much demand, I'll use the prims for something else.

If only things that cost above a certain limit are listed, new people who don't know any better won't realize that these items are available for free. Of course you would hope that if they clicked on the name of a person and noticed that everything they had listed for sale was created by someone else, they'd get a clue. Invasion of privacy that it is, this site could have the side benefit of revealing to the whole SL community the people who rip off the noobs by selling them freebies for lots of money.

One good thing I noticed: I realized I had accidentally set one of my items to full perms, because someone else was selling it too!

I played around with searching for some items on the site and found myself more frequently TP'd to private homes than to stores. That is NOT cool. At least no one was home at the time, and I didn't search for sexgen beds so I didn't end up in someone's bedroom! That has GOT to be fixed, lest we end up with more people putting up banlines to keep bargain shoppers away from their private homes.

That ain't the rule I'm talkin' 'bout, Willis.

The new rule is, if you sign up for SL, you automatically are signed up for Searchbot. It will scan your items, and through no fault of or approval by you offer TPs to your bedroom. You will not know about Searchbot unless you scan the forums looking for this new rule, you didn't know you had to look for.

And when the next version of Searchbot also automatically buys your stuff, the rule is you're just SOL.

And when the new, new Searchbot with flouride auotmatically buys your stuff and tells your parents that you own and use BDSM pose balls, you're just SOL again, because you didn't predict this new bot was coming, or the next or the next.

Better get out your tinfoil hats...

This thread got out of hand several pages ago. Sorry I ever contributed to it. It's like pretty much every other new thing in Second Life. It's new, therefore it's evil, and can't be trusted to ever be something positive.

Damn the new stuff. Evil. I wash my hands of this thread, and I stand behind electric sheep co. (for a limited time only.. you've seen the damage, fix it)

There were a bunch of things that I had bought, which are copy, no-mod, no-transfer. When I rez them, the 'for sale' button is checked but greyed out. So I cannot uncheck the 'for sale' button, it is 'locked'. Now, the items are no-transfer so nobody can actually come and buy them. But they all show up on the search because the for sale button, that I cannot uncheck, is checked.

Personally, I've estate banned the bot and opted out of the mess. So my stuff is no longer listed. (As a merchant, I might have been interested in the project if it was opt-in and if I could specify what parcel/area was searchable and what parcel/areas were not. But the way it was implemented has left a bad taste in my mouth.)

But here's my question now: How do you uncheck the 'for sale' button on stuff that's no mod?

-Atashi

It's to be expected I suppose, this is how LL reacts to these kinds of things, and ESC is so enmeshed with the Lindens that... well...

Forseti, you can dress a pig in a Sunday dress and bonnet, but, it's still a pig.

You really ought to be ashamed of yourself. But that's just it, for some reason, many users of SL have no shame. "Information wants to be free!" and all that hogwash. Really easy to do if you never have to look the person who gets crapped on because of your auto opt-in piece of garbage. What is it about SL that attracts so many selfish and smug people who think that they are above having to participate in common decency?

This should be OPT OUT by default.

I will no longer be doing business of any sort with SLBoutique or anything else run by ESC, and all of my friends will be told about this and likewise encouraged to not do business with ESC.

Sadly, it seems this is so now What i am curious bout is...

if Linden Labs set up searchbot - well, they are the company running the grid. but ESC? I can't see where I ever signed a contract with ESC and handed over any way for them to make decisions about my in world life.

ESC, a company separate from LL, has decided for you what and how you have to run your in world life. Who gave them permission to do that?

To answer your question, Florence, the answer is: no-one. They just decided to do it. As with the internet at large, I suppose it's fair to assume that I'll be spied upon, data-mined, profiled, stalked, greifed, swindled, bullied, etc. At least LL could do the decent thing and put up a notice on the orientation islands (and on the sign-up pages) explaining to new residents just how little privacy they have and that LL will do nothing about it.

Well I think the searchbot is a very useful tool to find things for sale. I went and played with it a bit and found it much better than the in game search engine. In addition it allows comparison of prices which is a very useful feature.

My main criticisms are that it's still buggy and that their notification to people about it was (and is) very poor.

Many posters have used hyperbolic language: burglary, rape, spy satellite etc. While clearly they are upset and have a right to be upset at not being notified of the bot deployment, the language used is not correct.


When it come down to it the bot is simply doing much faster what random people visiting in person would do given enough time. It is enabling arbitrage within SL.

If I want to prevent my items being sold for less than their value (or the "burglary" as it has been claimed" I will ensure my items are not for sale.

If I want people not to come to my land (to prevent "rape" or "spy satellite" I'll set up ban lines and limited access.


I can agree that we need a sell to specific person option for prims, but describing what the bot is doing in such emotive (and incorrect terms, since I see nobody showing me where what it does is against the TOS), does not help.

I really think this has become another tempest in a tea pot.

They are not attempting to ruin or control your Second Life, nor create mechanisms to enable others to invade your privacy. They are building a search engine, which indexes items for sale in an off-world, searchable database. In concept, I fail to understand how this can hurt anyone, or how it can be interpreted as something done with malice aforethought. Clearly, some problems have been exposed recently with its implementation. Give them a chance to sort them out before you light the torches.

Which leads me to this idea:

[x] Show in Search > Places under .. etc

Is it reasonable to assume that the majority of folks with commercial endeavors in world list the parcel in Search Places? The crawler could be written to only index items on parcels with this enabled. Even if a parcel is listed under a non-commercial category, the fact that it is listed at all creates an expectation that someone might show up from anywhere, at any time, via in-world search. It's an indication that the resident desires this, and extending it to an off-world search engine could only serve to enhance results.

A further precaution could be taken, assuming that the category field is settable and readable even if a parcel isn't actually listed, and it appears so, would be to set your category to "residential" and have the crawler explicitly exclude any parcel set to this category.

I'm only on my second cup of coffee, but I'm thinking that if these things could be implemented effectively, the crawler would be more targeted, and the project would be a win-win for all. Am I missing anything here? Do I need more coffee?

I think this would resolve a lot of people's concerns. Not everyone's of course. But enough that the bloodthirsty pitchfork-wielding mob would be greatly reduced in number. Most people who want to keep their parcels private don't list them in search. Since, of course, the whole purpose of listing a parcel in search is to have it found.

The only issue I see with this is that some people have their homes on the same parcel as their stores - I keep a private workshop in the sky above my store, for example, and wouldn't want items I have up there listed on the site.

I know I need more coffee. But I really do think you're on to something. I hope that the folks over at ESC take this suggestion seriously.

Nope

/me hands Zaphod another cub of coffee just to be safe...

I think those are sensible suggestions.

In the same positive vein, I hope ESC will NOT implement a pay for your listing ranking similar to the in game classifieds. The little part time designers like me cannot afford $**000 classifieds. But I would still like people to find items offered by me that meet their search criteria.

Finora, I was the original poster, and I used the word 'burglary'. I do not write emotively, nor was I emotive when I wrote the original piece. I called it 'burglary' for the following reason. BTW, I am Englsig, so my definitions are those under English law.

Burglary is defined in English Law as when someone enters your property, and takes any of your possessions without your consent.

In the scenario which I described, people came onto my property, directly into houses which I owned, and took goods without my consent. Let us look at these two aspects here...

1. Did those purchasers come onto my property without my consent? The answer to that is clearly YES. I gave no consent, none was asked for, and I had no knowledge of it until afterwards.

2. Did they remove property without my consent? Again YES. I gave no authority for that, no permission was requested nor given.

Some have argued that by setting an object for sale, that that in itself gives permission for people to both enter my home and take the goods for sale, having paid for them.

I would say to that this: In RL you are ENTITLED to put any For Sale sign on any antique that you have in your basement, go to work, and EXPECT it to be still there when you arrive back home. Unless, of course, you place an ad in the local paper saying "Antique for sale, US$10 only, just come to 24 Arcacia Avenue, make your way down into the basement there, leave the cash on the washing machine, and take the antique with you."

Even if a nosey neighbor across the street, with a telescope, sees through your basement window, and sees the antique with a For Sale sign on it, cannot go across the street, enter your home while you are out, make his way to the basement, leave 10 bucks on the washing mahine, and leave with your antique. Do you really think the cops would have nothing to say about that?

Also remember, no matter how foolish the home owner is, burglars cannot avoid conviction because they say that the owner left a door or a window unlocked.

As for people who handle stolen goods, they cannot claim either that they legitimately purchased a widescreen HDTV from a guy with a van at the back of a bar, for 50 dollars, no questions asked. The law requires people to be reasonably suspicious, and make enquiries, when offered goods at way below the market price. I would say that a L$14000 sexgen bed being offered for sale at L$1, is suspicious. Wouldn't you?

What is also suspicious is the way in which Electric Sheep obtained this information in the first place. From my initial enquiries it appears from answers given in the scripting forums that there is no command or function in the LSL scripting language for a script to discover if an object is set For Sale or not, and its price. So how are they doing it? Investigations will continue.

Rock,

There's nothing at all suspicious about how they obtain the "for sale" information. The crawler is simply a customized version of the viewer that you and I used, and the process we humans use to determine if an item is for sale, is simply automated on the crawler. In short, it's a bot. There is nothing shady going on here.

I'm sorry for your loss, I know it is substantial. ESC have deep pockets, and perhaps they could consider some compensation for that loss, but understand it was an UNINTENDED effect of the system.

If they had been more forthcoming in the first place about the project, residents could have been better prepared to avoid losses like this, but it also has to be noted that ESC have pretty much the same communication channels available to them as we have, and the reach is very limited. Only Linden Lab have the ability to communicate with residents on a global scale.

I think your anger over your financial loss is clouding your ability judge this thing objectively, and for that I do not fault you at all. I just point it out.

A year ago, if someone had been flying onto peoples' land and turning his camera around to write down all the parcel's objects so he could display all the ones on sale on some website - wed have considered him a greifer.

Why is it becuase the process is automated, it is not the same?

The CS only guarantees privacy of conversation. I think this is a flaw.

You should have a reasoble expectation no one will monitor what items you rez, what places you go to, and when you are online and off. You should have an even further expectation that someone wont post this information on a website somewhere.

Lack of absolute privacy is one thing. People delibrately invading it is another.

For starters, english law has no bearing whatsoever. The servers are hosted in california and texas, the state laws of those places would apply if not federal laws.

Secondly, this is not RL. By setting an item for sale in SL, you are giving permission for somebody to buy it. By not having banlines, you are giving permission for people to enter your property. It doesn't matter that this is not how it works in RL, it's how it works in SL.

Perhaps it's better to think along the lines of websites. If you set items for sale in a hidden part of your website which somebody stumbles across, if your automated sales system takes the money and agrees to the sale, you would have to honour that sale (yes, even under english law). If however you set access restrictions and somebody had to "hack" to get past those restrictions before placing an order, not only would you not have to honour the order, you would have a case for prosecuting them for the "hacking".
Banlines may not prevent all sales from occuring, but then that's like having broken security on your website. If nobody has to break through your security to get to the item for sale, then it's up to you to remove the purchasing system or fix the security.

Somebody recently stumbled across a way to order mobile phones at no cost because of a n incorrect page being left on the server. To get to the page required the use of the google cache. The only thing that saved that company from going broke was the fact they said in their emails that they would refund the money paid if they ran out of stock. A refund of £0 costs them nothing. Until they ran out of stock though, they had to honour those sales (a few friends of mine received their free phones).

This is more along the lines of a RL equivalent to this situation. The phone company obviously didn't want this published, it was and they lost money because of sales they had no real control over. They learnt the lesson and fixed the system.
Setting items for sale in your basement is not even remotely similar unless you look at SL being RL and SL houses actually offering privacy (which they don't).

Thank you for your detailed response Rock. I have no disagreement with your definition of burglary. What I do disagree with is how you use that definition to arrive at your conclusion.


With all due respect, you did give implied consent by allowing open access to your land. There is no law of trespass in SL nor is it against the TOS to enter someones land/house if they have allowed open access.

Now the question of is it good mannered or nice is an entirely separate issue. There things are somewhat unclear. If you are in the rental business, you would presumably expect that people would come to your land to inspect what you were offering for rent. Some people in SL are happy to let people tour their property, others are not.

I have witnessed some of this behaviour on my own land where people will TP in in front of me and proceed to wander around inside looking at stuff (while ignoring me). Because my land is open I am always cogniscent that if there is a way for people to find the lowest common denominator they sadly will.




By setting the item for sale (mistakenly or otherwise) you were giving consent. The issue of whether the arbitrage was fair is a separate question (in my opinion what happened to you was not fair but it was legal).





My comment would be that this is SL not RL. In SL information (as we are witnessing), flows far more freely, is more visible and is found more quickly than in RL. The bot is equivalent to a nosy neighbour with a telescope and an X Ray machine directly linked to a page on craigslist. Plus for your RL analogy to be correct you would have to add that you left your doors unlocked and a note on them saying anyone could enter.


Regardless of our differences of opinion, the acid test would be to see if you could file a police report of your burglary. In my opinion no police authority would accept it for the reasons I gave above.


I think the way forward is to put reasonable limits on what the bot can index (as described in the posts above) and perhaps to allow people to opt in. I think what happened to you is very unfortunate and in your position I would be angry too. I also think ESC have handled the lauch of the bot with fairly staggering incompetence.

I hope though people can recognize the potential usefulness of such a tool and that ESC can address peoples concerns.

I agree, Colette. I lost an entire interior worth over 7000$L, all I wanted to do was take off the "For Sale" sign. so I rezzed it on my land, went to see a friend and returned after 10 mins. only to find out that it was gone. I've never been so frustrated in my sl! The new "owner" refused to return it and after inquiry I quickly learned that it was all legal!! It still feels like a robbery to me....

I was forced to put up banlines on my land.

Mandy C

They are not monitoring what items you rez, where you go, or your online/offline status. They are indexing items for sale on an offworld database. There are shortcomings in the current implementation which are having a negative, and unintended effect on some residents. It's beta. As such, much improvement is necessary. To think there is anything malicious going on here is just irrational paranoia.

Banlines may not protect you. It may be possible to buy items through a banline, although I'll have to go in world later to test that.