My Sister is Scum, and not allowed to shop

People do it because they're afraid of copybotters and...

ALL ALTS ARE COPYBOTTING MANIACS THAT ARE OUT TO GETZ MAH LOOTZ!!!

When I first got my land, I set the flags for adult and no piof thinking it would help me avoid those 'pesky kids sneaking into SL' ( @self ).
- The next thing I did was invite a friend over.

And discovered she couldn't get in.

Suffice to say that was when I started paying attention, and quickly learned that a lot of people run around on NPIOF alts, or even mains, and buy their stuff with lindens earned, bought outside the secondlife.com website system, or whatever... and that a lot of those people were stable regularly SL-using friends of mine who had very responsible conduct.

Reading some blogs, and watching some group drama, its also become clear to me that there are plenty of premium or PIOF members that grief, hack, copybot, stalk, and otherwise behave badly.

My end conclusion is that you simply can't use some random metric to presume other conduct. You actually need to pay attention.

But its easy to say 'fix this and it will solve everything' and then stick your head in the sand...
- which is pretty much what those people did and how it caught your alt.

I've not seen that inworld, but there -IS- an option in Emerald to warn you of people under a certain age and if you have land perms, auto orbit / eject / etc them...

Which just seems amazingly foolish to me.

What if I'm getting into some theme - say a themed roleplay?

So there I am on 'Mongolian Horde RP' sim... I'm not going to want to have it say 'Pussycat' above my name. I'm going to get on google, look up the language, and make an alt.
- Plus I -NEVER- remove my neko bits. But I will log into a non-neko alt.

So that new alt now needs a full '12th century Mongolian woman' getup... Time to go shopping.

- And if you ban me by age... you just lost some of the maybe 5000-10000 Linden I dumped on that alt to make sure I got it all down pat.

I've known several people that do that, they make themed alts.

Once again... trusting in some random metric is absolutely pointless. Its a head-in-the-sand move.

I've come across a few rp sims that have AV age limits of 10-90 days which I never understood for the reasons given by Pussycat. At times with alts I've been denied entry due to NPIOF restrictions. In most cases it wasn't so much a worry about copybots as much as greifing prevention. I have to admit that I've used the NPIOF restriction for a short period when dealing with persistent greifing, but that was for just a week or two.

The other thing that seems self defeatist imho is when I came across networked banning and autoban features on land management packages from some vendors and groups. The banning network concept is flawed because everybody has different threshold of what they consider bannable. I've seen landowners who would ban people for just being a noob and asking a dumb question or something equally as trite. I'm not going to ban someone unless it's for something extremely grievous like a stranger offering me a friend request. Then the banhammer's commin' down! ;p j/k Same thing applies to auto ban features. If I wasn't there or if someone who represents me wasn't there and there's no pix or log it didn't happen.

I'm sure it isn't. At least it certainly wasn't my motivation for setting up shop on a 'Mature' estate and restricting access by 'No payment info on file'. Many prefer this method to the age verification bullsh!t. NPIOF is the most practical if still not necessarily cast-iron option to ensure that minors do not get access. I use it because there will be some items that I do not want tots 'n' teens or others of a delicate sensibility to view.

While I sympathise with Mickey's disappointment, it's only a minor hassle to add payment info to an alt's account and maybe even make a small purchase of lindens to get 'Payment info used'. I agree it is a pain in the neck to do so when we should all be deemed adults a priori. Yet, at least as far as I can determine, it is the unfortunate bottom line to all that classification nonsense the Lindens foisted on us last year.

I won't advertise on X-Street for different reasons: I never liked the concept of an off-world vending system in the first place but I surely don't like what has happened to SLXchange over the course of the past year.

Well that is a decent use case Ephraim and along the lines of something I advocated during the adult content discussions. However previously when I've seen these discussions it has been copybotting that has been cited as the main use case for restricting a parcel in such a fashion.

I don't understand how it would make any difference unless we are to assume that copiers are totally averse to spending their money? Otherwise, it doesn't follow that someone who isn't PIOF would be any more likely to be a rip-off merchant than one who has.

It's a confusion in the mind. They think "copybotters use NPIOF throwaway alts to upload their copies" but don't think "there's no reason to do that when they rip the copies in the first place".

Ephraim - these were prefab buildings. I doubt that selling them to "tots n' teens" is a concern. If we have to take on the concern of tots and teens being on the grid, then we might as well stuff our avs into a closet, and never set foot on the grid again. Even things as simple as what we wear.....would be a problem.....(I'm thinking this av's booty shorts should be outlawed).....what we say in IMs....some items that we have placed on our properties....what some people write in their profiles. We hardly have anything in place that could control all that.....except relying on our own good judgment when talking to an av that you suspect is too young. But we have no control over whether they are wandering about the grid, while we leave our stuff set out, and leave juicy tid-bits in our profiles...even the groups some of us belong to. Futile attempt there. Goes far beyond what might be displayed in a store.

For this av, it is not a "minor hassle" to add payment info. It is a definite "No way in hell, am I slapping my real name on this account." For some people....you require that, and the adventure is over.....the SL thing is over. They don't have another av they can send out to play. Until LL decides that it is required....some will continue with the adventure, and they will be purchasing stuff, as they continue.

I can go back as Mickey and purchase something, but I won't...will just purchase from someone else....no biggie for me. There will be people in SL who only have the NPIOF avs, for one reason or another. I didn't realize how many, until I worked my way through that pay to play thread over in the blogoramaforumthingy. Huge population. I'm just saying to merchants.....this ain't too bright, if you want to sell stuff to the whole population, as it is set up now, without info requirements. Maybe they don't care. Maybe they don't need to sell to the whole population.

If the control is in place to ward off griefers, then dang, that sucks. You shouldn't have to scale down your business in order to deal with that. If someone is having so many problems with griefers....need to look at other options for control, rather than adjusting your whole business model. Renting from an estate owner that has zero tolerance for griefing would take care of that.

there could be a lot of reasons..i guess a lot would depend on the person that set it to no NPIOF allowed..
maybe someone was stalking them and found that it takes away an easy route to making alts or griefers or anyone that could just make 20 alts..maybe they just don't want to deal with the open door LL put in back in 2006..

i know i used to hate going shopping and me able to get into a store but my friends not able to come in..we would all end up leaving then..

I don't really question why anymore..i just say to myself..thats how they want thier SL and this is how i want mine..i'll just go elsewhere and deal with who i choose just like they can lock out the ones they don't wish to deal with..
It's just too frustrating to waste time trying to figure out why anymore..

I don't doubt that it may be extreme for such caution to be exercised on a site that sells housing only. I cited my own example in response to Ciaran's assertion that denying access by PIOF is a general symptom of 'content theft paranoia'.


Indeed. While I recognise that there is no water-tight way of preventing underage scallywags from accessing places they have no business to be going, this is my preferred strategy to at least make it difficult for them.


I've never taken the trouble to find the RL identity of an av but I have been told that it is relatively easy for a knowledgable snoop to do so regardless of payment info status. In fact, I'd like to think that PIOF is the most difficult way of uncovering someone's identity. At least it should be.


Maybe you're right.

For instance, I will be taking pains to make it less than obvious how to buy at my shop when I finally open it. I'm not insane or even eccentric. It's just that I hope to discourage the kind of customer who doesn't know what to do with an item once he or she has bought it. I also prefer places that don't look like obvious shopping opportinuties. There's far too much of that sort of thing about.

it's due to using the buggy "restrict access to age verified adults" that people mistakenly believe they need to set. group members of that land will be the only ones consistently able to get to any parcel marked like that (assuming it's group owned land, otherwise just the owner)... you can IM the owner, and explain that, but many are too dense to listen, or have set it that way to purposely block the parcel.... in some cases it's the new annoyance tactic.

I dunno what the big deal is. It's not like you have to actually have your avatar walk into the store to buy stuff (unless their vendors are specifically coded for that.. most aren't). It doesn't stop anyone from camming in and buying stuff (or copybotting, for that matter; if it's within draw distance, you can copy it).

There could be any number of reasons why a seller has that restriction set on his/her land. Could even be accidental. Regardless, it is their choice. You can choose to do business with them over it or not. Getting huffy and harassing them over it isn't likely to help anyone, nor will the attitude "well, I am going to spread their name far and wide so no one does business with them"; two wrongs certainly don't make a right.

Do you care to expand on that? I'm not really understanding. Making it less than obvious how to buy? Just curious.

Talarus - I'm not getting huffy. I am sending a message to merchants.....that if you have your store set up this way.....this is how it might be interpreted. And just asking "why" would someone set up their store this way. Was not aware of all the reasons. In no way, did I harass them....but offered up a suggestion, that they might be losing business.

I know. The message was intended for the general audience here, not just yourself, but some of whom seem more "put out" by it than others.

Well....the being "put out" message is one that a merchant should consider. I was "put out" when the block message comes up on screen, forbidding access. Gut reaction is...."whoaaa....what's up with the Tude?"

Just sayin'.....it sends a message to some people. Maybe they aren't going to come into forum, and ask for an explanation. In that case....you sent them off with a bad first impression.

Maybe they have considered it. Maybe they have weighed the pros and cons of it and decided to do it anyway, perhaps even with regret.

The mechanism is crude; perhaps they wish they could custom-tailor the message to something a bit more "polite" rather than the cold, impersonal system message that LL provides. However, that's all LL provides, so they have to make do, and hope that people on the receiving end are mature enough to understand and respect it. If not, well, maybe they feel that it is thus doing the job as they intended it.

I can say my reaction would be "*shrug* -- moving on", or maybe even as a challenge, whereupon I cam in and buy something anyway.

I don't think that you should imply that there is a "maturity" level involved. Read back up, and look at what people's gut reactions would be. If your reaction is "shrug...moving on"....they still lost the possibility of a sale.

As a "mature" merchant.....I don't respect it.

And now, knowing the possible reasoning behind it...maybe even less so. Because besides sending the message that I am not qualified to purchase an item in your store....you might be telling me that:

1) I am not allowed, because I might be a thief.
2) I am not allowed, because I might be a griefer.

agreed

If i was a betting person, i'd say a good percentage of actual copybotting are done by PIOF a/c's (incl.merchants & older a/c's) ....now whether they use a NPIOF ALT via a proxy connection or not, is an interesting question.

A lot of Europeans don't place PIOF, but can still bring large amounts of Lindens into SL using 3rd party exchanges like Eldex, Bulido, DX, TeleLinden, Moneyslex...to name but a few. I received 7500 L commission on a single transaction the other month from an Avatar that was a NPIOF a/c selling 500k L.

IMO, if you run a business on the SL grid, it's not a great idea restricting your potential audience by a large % through NPIOF restrictions.

You can find assholes that are 1 SL day old and you can find some that are 5yrs old! Age is not a factor!

I don't consider some of the responses to it in this thread alone very mature, no.



So? Assuming that they don't understand that is rather presumptuous, no?



Wait, you don't respect that they have the right to deny business to whomever they want? If you don't respect their choices for their business, do you think you have some measure of control over them to change it?

You'd probably lose that bet. PIOF isn't required to run copybot except in one situation: a private estate that requires PIOF to even TP in. That, and copybotters are lazy; they are going to go after the low-hanging fruit.

LOL....not even touching that. You're on your own, with that statement, buddy.



Holy cow. You're twisting again.

If you don't want to listen to a work-through of how this might effect your business.....fine. Maybe some do.

Umm.. when am I ever NOT "on my own"? <.<



Not in the least. You're using the words; if you're not meaning what they are saying, maybe try using different words.



I tend to default to expecting people to know what they are doing in those situations. If they don't, then they will figure it out soon enough. I don't presume to tell them their business, unless they want to know.

I certainly am not going to get "huffy" enough over it to bother coming to the forums and start a thinly-veiled rant thread over it. <.<

It wasn't a rant, Talarus. It was an observation and a few questions. Some of the explanations were educational. The insight on what someone's reaction would be....is possibly helpful to another merchant.