FBI called over land bot FRAUD

On page 3, Avastar June 2007, this month.

Looking bad for SL!!!


http://www.the-avastar.com/pdfs/2007/TheAvaStar_Issue24.pdf

Page 3 of the Avastar???? Holy Crap!!!THIS IS HUGE!!!!!!!!!!!

As much as I despise the bot that is named in the article, he has done nothing that would get him in any hot water with the FBI. Nor will LL have anything to worry about. Not only is M-rlin not breaking the law, he's not breaking the TOS. If he was, LL would have shut him down by now.

They looked at what he was doing, had their lawyers look at it, and then they chose to look away. It is up to us to police each other and to get the word out to everyone we meet as to the safe and bot-free way to transfer land. The FBI ain't gonna do crap, except maybe penalize the guy who made the original complaint.

Best thing we can do is spread the "How to transfer land" thread around instead. It is much more valuable reading for SL citizens.
/327/3d/174599/1.html

Good.

coco

Ray's right about this. Although opportunistic and just plain f***waddish, landbotman's actions are 100% legal.

One could argue there's potential for a CIVIL suit against LL, because they are aware of the situation but fail to warn residents about it. But since a decent lawyer capable of winning such a suit would cost WAY more than any money one might lose via landbot, I just don't see this happening.

I still think making a landbot script publicly available so that everyone can use it, thereby bringing down the grid, is the best way to force LL's hand on this one.

Of course, then we'll start seeing threads about unscrupulous land sellers who trick poor unknowledgeable landbot operators into buying worthless land!

I'm sorry but I 100% dissagree that the bots are 100% legal.

They break the TOS in several areas, most notably it intereferes severely with other people's enjoyment and use of SL. In /principle/ they are completly against the TOS. If LL had any balls whatsoever they would at least define limits to and proper behavior of any such automated system running in SL, land bots, electric sheep bots whatever. At most they would out and out ban landbots as being nothing but harmful profiteers running rampant on their systems to the detriment of virtually everyone else in the game.

If nothing else, apart from the moral issues, isn't there something about "unfair use of resources" somewhere in all the legal crap, that has been used occasinally regarding camping chairs?

If only Linden Lab had policed SL properly from the get-go, we wouldn't have most of these problems now.

Broccoli

I agree with you. Sadly, LL does not. Their allowance of bots to continue unhindered is proof. I also dislike the fact that there was once a blog post that they were taking steps to address the landbot issue and nothing was ever done. Could almost call it lying to your customers. Or at the very least, not seeming to care very much.

The updating problem is a serious question. But if the point of running the bot is civic action not trading land, the cash and tier obstacle need be no problem at all: Just set the bot to buy land only at a negative value. Since the price of land cannot fall below zero, it will then never buy land and you will never have to pay anything. But it would still be running around making constant calls on the database...

i think some scripting guru should find the script that is being used, and pass it ALL around SL so we ALL have the same opportunity.

of course, if said scriptor was smart, that person would charge BIG L$ for it too. to be fair.

at first, it's be a lot of fun to mess with 'you-know-who", but once everyone was doing it, SL would shut it down for sure!

just a thot.

Download updated libSL, recompile and run. Very tricky indeed .

Besides, that's the sort of thing 1.18 is supposed to solve.

You are exactly right about the maintenance required, as well as the issues regarding tier and responsible use.

Any decent programmer could make a fairly good landbot, but apparently people just want it "for free" instead, not even willing to take the time necessary to adapt any one of the many working bot samples available.

And to top it all off... Even if by some miracle "300-400 people" start using it and "bring the grid down", I'm not entirely confident that it would force LL to address the issue

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Ahhh, you just want bots to be a strain on the servers and not buy land. Hmmm, I'm not liking that solution. All it means is poor performance for all, and a suspended account. The last time they took notice and action on database hogs, they left the number one bot offender up and running while suspending others who were not running land bots. Sticky solution at best. I'd rather see new bots buying land and giving L-ndbaron M-rlin a run for his money.

It's not quite that trivial, but that's a good simplification of it I guess. Supposedly SL will start having a more stable client protocol, so that should help, but libsl still has one of the most amorphous unstable APIs I've ever seen, so each update requires at least a little bit of fiddling to resolve conflicts with incompatible API versions.

That's form of griefing. Against the TOS.

Yeah.... Um... That is f**king insane.

why has no one else ever duplicated the script? he can't be the only one who knows how to alter the codes.

It's a program, not a script, and several people have. It's not all that hard to do.

That's more like a form of virtual terrorism, akin to a grid attack.

It's been duplicated by four or five that I know of...I think the reason is because it's a hell of a lot of work, and unless you are an immoral f*cktard like M-rlin, you really can't make that much money at it, especially since there is an immoral f*cktard setting his bot to only get mistakes: the cheapest land and thus the best bargains.

90% of all this could be solved by permabanning this dude. The fact that LL has not is the main reason why I have no respect for the company and have taken my money out of the game.

make it and sell it. i'll be your first customer. i was saving for more land, but i'd rather 'F' with a landbot for awhile. i haven't much else to do in SL right now.

now THAT'S entertainment!

I have a great deal of more interesting and lucrative things to do, and absolutely no wish to be a part of that industry.

But... It's been pointed out in several places on these forums how and where to get code that will enable you to do it yourself

Making NPC bots for RP sims is fun. Making landbots I will never personally use is not. I'd rather do the fun stuff.

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well, i have never seen such a thread.

and i don't REALLY want to be a land bot. i just want to piss off other people.. well, ONE other person.

wut's an NPC bot?

In my specific case, an NPC bot is a bot that is capable of fighting using the CI combat system. Basically, it's an automated swordfighting opponent

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CgOMpQgVevo

The video quality sucks, and you can't see much of the movement, but many people think it's fun to fight a bot

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