Automated Burglary

Ah but they are monitoring the items I rez. The items I have that are listed "for sale" are a subset of items I rez. If the items are in my home they are not being made commercially availble.

How many sellers work on vendors in their home? How many dont have the permissions 100% set up while doing so?

Besides - Im not convinced they dont monitor all the items I rez - the opt in version of the service will display all my in world objects not just the for sale ones.

I never said they were doing the other two , only that those would be wrong also.

Im certain it is.

You can even buy land that has you banned.

So if I have a store, with a sign in the front listing the terms and conditions to which you must agree before buying my items, and someone comes in to buy an item using the search bot, I would expect no complaints when I hold them to the terms and conditions on the sign.

I very much agree with and support Zaphod's suggestion, that the bot should be rewritten to exclude any items that are on parcels that do not have the "Show in search > places" box checked. I suppose an exception I would make for that is that if someone is willing to sacrifice their privacy and fully opt in, as the service is offered now, and allow ALL their prims to be listed, then the parcel settings should not matter. If you're using the service to locate a lost in-world item, you'd need to find them no matter whose parcel they are on.

As a merchant, I don't use the "Show in search > places" method of advertizing for the simple reason that my stores are all in rented mall space. But the land owner almost always does use "Show in search > places" for the mall itself. So most retail locations would, by default, get searched.

When you buy land, the "Show in search > places" option is always unchecked, even if it was checked when you made the purchase. It's something you must intentionally activate. So no one would be searched based on a default setting.

I would further recommend that ESC should make an effort to compile a list of sims that prohibit retail sales, and exclude them from the search entirely. For example, I live in FairChang Resort. It is a 100% residentially zoned private island sim. The covenant for the sim clearly states that it is against sim rules to do ANY retail sales there, even as clickable 'for sale' items. So there is NO reason for this retail search bot to even set foot in that sim, unless someone who lives there has opted in and asked it to list every prim they own, regardless of the for sale setting.

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I can now verify that baning the bot from your land does NOT prevent it from listing prims on your land owned by anyone who has not explicitly opted out, but which are checked as 'for sale'. My Partner, as it turned out, has two no-mod decorations in our home for which the 'for sale' box is stuck in the checked position. It was that way when she bought it, not because she set it. The objects are not actually for sale, nor can they be bought. But they do provide a direct LM to our front door and our entry hall to anyone who finds them on that website. The only way to avoid being listed, since we can't un-check that box, is to remove the items from in-world, or to opt out of the service. I gave her the LM for opting out, and sincerely hope she does so right away.

I also note that again, both of those listings indicated someone else's parcel name, but the coordinates of the item on our parcel. So it's recording parcel name based on where it happens to stand, but is recording items in other parcels. This makes me seriously wonder how parcel banning it can possibly prevent it from listing your things. If it is reading parcel settings based on where it is standing, how will it even KNOW if it's banned from a parcel half a sim away that it is remotely scanning? The answer would seem to be that it can't know, unless it attempts to enter the parcel.

SL has no way of enforcing T&C on a sale, other than to get an agreement first before manually selling the item to them. Having a sign visible would be no guarantee that the sign was seen, read or understood, even by a human avatar.

You could of course set up a sign linked to a vendor, with a button for agreement to the terms before the vendor will allow them to purchase the items.

I have no coded way of enforcing the terms and conditions.

I know Linden Labs won't help.

And, I know how to create some bad press for Linden Labs as a an internet haven for the next best scam.

The fact of the matter is that this tool, despite whatever positive uses it might have, can be and is used to take money from people who have no prior knowledge of the tool and no information to protect themselves.

Everyone who is phishing, domain slamming, and doing the Nigerian bank scam is risking arrest. They need to come to Second Life, in which they can do the same activities in a setting that protects them.

Yes. Welcome to the forums.

In addition to suggestions for things like only defaulting to opt-in for parcels listed as commercial, I think adding levels of opt-in might be good, too. Maybe default the slurl for everybody to be the parcel landing point and only slurl the exact object location if the parcel owner has explicitly requested that.

Complete nonsense.

All the information anyone needs to protect themselves is the following:

If you set an item for sale on publicly accessable land for zero dollars, someone else might just happen by to take you up on your generous offer. If you do not intend for this to happen, don't put the item up for sale.

It amazes me the amount of traffic in these forums that seems to demand that "the system" protect people from themselves. Yes, as I've said before, and I'm sure ESC would admit, the search engine is in need of some safeguards to make it less intrusive into people's private affairs, and I'm sure it will be done, but this is being blown so far out of proportion it's just ridiculous. I don't intend any offense to the OP here, but the other side of this unfortunate event is something called personal responsibility.

SO the fact that the searchbot scans peoples objects, lists the one ones "FOR SALE" on a website somewhere without being asked, is not a potential issue?

Great.

I dont think anyone should be keeping tabs on me without asking. And if they are they sure as hell shouldnt be displaying it on some website I never heard of.

Yes Im aware it happens, even in real life, but guess what? That doesnt make it right.

Setting up ban lines will not prevent anyone from using this 'service' to take advantage of items priced at less than full market value. Even if you ban everyone but yourself from your parcel, if they follow one of these links to your things, they will appear just outside your ban lines, with a beacon pointing directly to your item. They can then stand right there, outside your ban lines, and buy it anyway.

Other than opting out, which does de-list your items, there is no way to protect yourself from the potential abuses of this tool if you are not on a private island that you own yourself.

Even a sim-wide ban would be useless, if the sim in question was adjacent to any other sims. The bot could scan you from the next sim, and people could buy from the next sim. If you can't take the entire sim off-line, you can't protect it.

How is someone who only owns a normal parcel, be it private sim or mainland, supposed to protect themselves from this? If you don't opt out, which you can't do unless you're aware this threat exists in the first place, there is no way to be sure the bot won't appear the next moment, somewhere else in the sim, list your stuff, and you could then have someone TP in and buy it out from under you. Even though you were still in the process of setting the price.

So OK, the bot can't be everywhere at once. Odds are it's not in your particular sim at the instant you set something for sale, and odds are that even if it is, no one is likely to search and find your item and TP there to buy it before you can change it. But it certainly could happen. Who among us hasn't had to take a phone call while in the middle of building something? Who has never had to go to the bathroom? Who has never had to answer the doorbell? Do you make those things wait while you lock all the permissions back down on your work in progress, before you deal with them? No? Then you're vulnerable.

The people this will hurt the most are builders and anyone who hires anyone else to procure and position no-copy content. Because now there is no safe way to transfer ownership after the things are placed in-world, if you haven't opted out of EVERY bot that does this.

We know about ESC's bot now. At least some of us do. But will the next one be even that visible? Or will some malicious person make the same sort of bot and intentionally code it to do the purchasing as soon as it finds each item? They very well could.

Show me where this information was before you posted it.

Here is the key problem. Yes, it is obvious that by placing an item for sale at $0, that anyone can buy it for $0.

What is not obvious is that the purchase can be done instantaneously. In real life, someone would have to walk into the building physically to purchase this.

What is not obvious is that there is a database available listing all items for sale at $0L, everywhere. I assumed that the Lindens might have this sort of capability. I did know know that others did.

Show me where I could have find out both of those non-intuitive points prior to this thread.

Without knowing those two things, a person might think, Hey, I have found a creative way to let someone borrow my items and then give them back to me. It is not the intended use of the sale property. But based on the information available to most users of Second Life, a creative use of the sale function did not expose one to immediate loss of property.

The third problem is that everyone in real life expects a certain amount of good faith in dealings. Second Life appears to be a place in which the spoils go not to the honest, but to the quickest coders.

This post you just made would be fine in the Second Life knowledge base. That way, the information would be available. However, the information has not been available. Of course, you are free to point me to the obvious resource that I missed.

I think this goes back to the same problem we have in the rest of Second Life.

We have Community standards that simply are not precise enough.

The whole Disclosure clause is 4 sentences Long.

I dont think this is going to hack it as Second Life grows.

I really hate to burst people's bubbles but most people dont want to live out their second life feeling like they are a 3d website. They want it to feel closer to a virtual home.

There may noy be any sinister motives here, but this still is far from being on the level. Culpability rests with The developers of this "feature". for trying to push it through the back door, without any notification, and for making us all prticipate by default, making us go through the Byzantine process of opting out. I doubt this is by accident. And if the providers had any knowledge of this projct and didn't make us aware, then they share in the blame. Now that the jig is up, we can all act accordingly. But in my case, no matter how this develops, I will never use any service, website or whatever this company puts out related to Second Life.

Hi Sys,

I was only using English law for my definitions, as I do not know the definition of burglary in the US. But to say English Law has no bearing whatsoever is incorrect. Most of the Terms and Conditions in the LL TOS are unenforceable in the English Courts. I pay for my SL service in England, not in California, and this argument has been recently used in the US itself to prosecute people who have set up internet gambling systems in Europe, but who take money from US customers, and have been arrested when visiting the US. But that is another issue.

You then say that SL is not RL, and this is a fair point (but tell that to the IRS), but I was responding to someone's criticism of my RL definitions as opposed to hers.

You say that "by setting an item for sale in SL, you are giving permission for somebody to buy it." Really? Who's law is that? RL law? LL law? Your law? Make it up as you go along law? If you believe that it is LL law, show me your source. Remember now, no reference to RL when responding to this question.

Putting up ban lines does not stop anyone from sending their camera into my home, then clicking on every object in there to see it if it for sale or not, and its price. I have not tested yet if they can then purchase an item for sale through ban lines, but I will test it this evening.

Even closing my sim to the public may not protect me. I also own a sim that is diagonal to mine, but in another name. I will test this evening if a camera in a diagonal sim can cross to my closed sim, detect whether a prim is for sale or not, and whether they can then purchase it or not. Result should be interesting.

I think the real issue here is this. If the only 'law' in SL is the CS and TOS as laid down by LL, and ANYTHING else goes, then that is simply not enough for commerce to continue to flourish in SL since the advent of the Bots. The CS and TOS are not written in stone, they can be changed, and lobbying can effect those changes.

I think you can clearly see from the size this thread has become, and the nature of the posts, that this issue is of great concern to many residents of sl, and many merchants in sl.

It is not enough for people to say, 'that's the way it is, live with it'. I really feel for people who have lost their land and lost their RL US$ used to purchase it, by Bots, and through my own experience I now know how that feels, having suffered losses myself through a new use for a Bot, but not only losses, a fundamental change in the way that I have lived and conducted business in sl up to now.

Fortunately, rather than being a lone 'No Payment Info on File' voice, I have considerable holdings in SL, and am in contact with several other Estate owners who share the same concerns. We will lobby LL hard for a change to their CS, TOS, Software, Scripting capabilities, or whatever else needs to be changed to ensure that people are not ripped off in SL by the activities of Bots. The approach worked for CopyBot, and I will work hard to ensure that ShepherdBot suffers the same ignominious fate.

At the very least, we desperately need to be able to set a price for sale BEFORE we check the "for sale" checkbox. We also need to add an option of specifying who the item is to be sold to, again, BEFORE we check the "for sale" checkbox.

Until that happens, there is no safe way to sell in-world placed no-copy items. Period. As soon as you start the process of setting in-world, no-copy content for sale, someone could steal it from you before you finish typing in the intended sale price. Ban lines won't stop that.

The only safe ways to transfer ownership of a no-copy item are to sell it to the person via a vending system, or for you to hand them the item, from your inventory to theirs. If they want you to place it for them, they have to give you mod rights and drop it in-world for you, roughly where they want it. Because you can't take it from them, place it, and give it back while placed in-world, without risking it being stolen.

Before I can answer this, I have to ask you a question:

What is so "non intuitive" about the notion that setting an item for sale might result in somebody purchasing the item?

I'm not trying to place all the blame on Rock here - in his situation he had a fair degree of expectation that what he was doing was relatively safe, but the facts remain - his sim was open to the public, and the items were set for sale. There is SOME level of personal responsibility that he must consider accepting. Making analogies that he did to real world scenarios doesn't cut it - that isn't the way Second Life works, no matter how ideal and wonderful it would be.

This does not justify the actions of the buyers, who I still think bear the most responsibility for this. It does expose a very serious flaw with the search engine, and I've no doubt the folks at ESC are aware of the issues and will take the necessary steps to prevent like incidents from occuring in the future.

You guys are demonizing something that, when the kinks are worked out, is going to become an exceedingly useful tool, for both buyers and sellers of goods in Second Life. What's happened is unfortunate, but it certainly wasn't the intended result. Do you honestly think a company like Electric Sheep would deliberately put their reputation on the line for something like this?

I should add that rezzing a for sale object does not result in its instantaneous listing in the search engine, nor does it in any way enable someone to immediately swoop in and buy it.

I'm beginnig to think being able to take profits out of SL is gonna be it's downfall. With profit comes greed. Greed knows no consideration, sympathy or fair play. What isn't illegal still can be unethical. I was ambivalent on the Bots issue until now. To me they are nothing but tools of greed and exploitation. While they are allowed we must try to watch out for new ways they can exploit the sysytem. But in my opinion, they should be done away with.

But useless as a solution to the problem of getting someone else to set something up for you. There's a real problem here and we need a real solution.

No, but it does make you vulnerable to that happening at any instant between rezzing the item and clicking "for sale" and setting the sale price.

The ESC bot only visits once a day, or whatever, as it traverses the whole grid with, presumably, only that one account.

What is to prevent them, or some other coder, from planting a bot like this in every sim, and having it scan as fast as it can check the whole sim? Absolutely nothing.

And right now, Linden Lab would just shrug and state "we don't get involved in disputes between residents".

I personally doubt ESC's service will be very useful at all. It only lists a fraction of the items actually for sale in SL. Most of the experienced merchants use scripted vendors, rather than placing an item in-world and setting the item itself for sale. Even the ones who sell clothes with one-prim vendors use "sell contents" scripts, and not the 'for sale' checkbox. So the vast majority of what really IS for sale won't even be listed by ESC.

Deciding to scan through everyone's objects wasnt a kink, it was a deliberate decision.

Requiring the system to be opt out was a deliberate decision.

Making it hard to opt out was a further deliberate decision.


Im not demonizing them
- I want their service to FAIL. Fail miserably. Fail sooner rather than later.

Id like the CS's disclosure clause rewritten to include my virtual objects in non-commercial spaces as well as my conversations. Id further like it to include my online whereabouts.

I think we're talking philosophy here. What is Second Life?

Should we think of Second Life as Real Life? If so, then our homes and private structures may not be trespassed upon. People should not walk through our front doors unless somehow invited. Only things on store shelves or advertised for sale in some way should be considered buyable--the mere presence of a price tag should not mean anything.

Or should we think of Second Life as the Web, a 3D Internet? If so, then we should expect all kinds of spiders, crawlers, etc. to be nosing around at all times, indexing and cataloging everything we create (unless we specifically code our sites to prevent this). We should expect anybody to browse our property at any time, unless we implement some sort of access restriction scheme. Even sites that are not the target of any external links may be stumbled across and accessed by others.

I've thought of SL more according to the latter analogy, but it is clear from many of the arguments in this thread (and others) that many people think of it more in RL terms.

With six pages to go through, it's hard to know if I missed it, but is there actually any evidence that the OP's incident is even related to the ESC bot?

I have all the sympathy in the world for what happened (seriously, Rock, I do), but I think it's quite possible that this is being held up as proof of something that it does not prove.

He has said that an avatar scanner did not pick up anyone prior to the first object being purchased... That would mean that the search bot had not been there.

Were the items ever listed? Did anyone ever check?

They would likely have remained in the search results for at least 24 hours.

Did anyone ever really think to check? Isn't it quite possible that it was just some asshat who found the item for sale and IM'd some friends or something?

If there is proof, it surely belongs in this thread, right?




.

Who wants to live out a second life in your second scenario though?

It only helps businesses

Proof isn't important - people have a cause now and the destruction of all things that even rhyme with the word 'sheep' is the important thing.

Well, you know, any attempt at ALL would have been nice. You know, ANY ATTEMPT WHATSOEVER.

coco