The Day After: Bot Back-Lash and the People Speak
by prokofy on 16/11/06 at 4:24 am
In Hooper at the Home of the Copy-Bot, Libsecondlife HQ. Seemingly anti-libsl protestor actually staging an arch, tongue-in-cheek pro-Baba action; Baba himself made the sign years ago.
By Prokofy Neva, Community Affairs Desk
The day after hundreds of people shut down their stores and stopped creating the fantasy world for the Lindens to sell their platform to Big Business, the picture is actually very encouraging. The social and technical damage of the CopyBot is being limited, and substantial and influential sections of the community are making their voices heard in their demand to Linden Lab to have a viable world: that LL disable 3rd party clients until they can protect the content-makers in SL and their creations from copyright theft.
Many of these stores have opened back up again because they simply don’t want to lose sales. Despite bot-panic, there was $526,788 spent in the last 24 hours, and they wanted to make sure they got their piece of it. To be sure, some filled their stores with a maddening and idiotic chatter with a 96-m range shouting “!quit” in the mistaken belief this would defeat the bot — it can only effect v.1 of the bot, and there are now countless others out there. Sales of Bot and anti-Bot and pro-Bot t-shirts were brisk.
Not a single report was to be had of a single product copied *and resold* using the Bot. That’s the reality of the virtuality, folks. The damage is potential, not real. In my hundreds of rentals for example, I had not a single report or sighting of a CopyBot for sale; not a single report of anyone being deployed to actually copy and resell through theft of IP; but dozens of complaints about the damn anti-Bot chatter, and a handful of those closing shops and refunding on store rentals in fear. The saddest sight for me to see was the newbie stalls of the first, halting, tacky or kitschy content that people make in SL, emptied in panic and fear over a Bot that would never bother with their content. Botting was mainly a poor folks, mainland problem because it involved flying around and copying people’s stuff on the more open-highways mainland; islands are hidden, set to group, filled with security orbs that reject people. And then there was the backlash…
Thousands of people in groups all over SL pasted the names of people they *thought* were using or selling CopyBot and thousands instantly banned them. A few discussions got started about lack of due process, some debate kicked up around BanLink again, which is an supposed opt-out service to share trusted ban information, but basically the default was — ban first, ask questions later. Still…some were returning to unban those mistakenly banned.
Angry postings continued to be made to the Lindens’ blog–1138 responses to date, and several highly tense inworld rumbles were held between tekkies advocating the “information likes to be free” copyleft school of thought, and others who either felt such copying had to be done more responsibly, and still others who were ready to march on Linden Lab’s real-life offices in San Francisco and sent lynch-mobs to the Libsecondlife virtual home base in Hooper.
Reverse Engineer Spaight stands tall to guard the libsl castle — he’s also bearing a faux-protest, actually pro-Baba sign.
STOP COPYBOT!!!, an inworld lobbying group now 647 strong, mainly of the shop-owners and club-managers who shut their doors yesterday, is organizing to make a show of force at tomorrow’s town hall with Philip Linden, and is urging everyone to ban all members of libsecondlife to make a point.
In Dreamland, a vote was called of the now 949 citizens of “Ansheland” as the continent developed by Anshe Chung Studios is dubbed. The resolution asked whether “we as a community” should ask Linden Lab to disable all third-party programs that access the client to make unauthorized copies — it passed easily by a majority set for more than 51 percent on the group tools.
In a possibly more influential vote, SLDEV, a group containing dozens of the top developers of SL, many of whom are listed in the “developers’ directory” on the home page, passed this resolution:
Second Life: REVERSE ENGINEERING
The TOS explicitly states that reverse engineering the client is not allowed. Should Linden Lab enforce this TOS rule and disable all third party clients/hacks until the they can protect our content from being copied/violated?
Group SLDEV Proposal PASSED!
CopyBot, schmopy-bot– the real winners this week are the Group Tools and the people enlivening them.
The newly-revised group features, even while still buggy and clunky, enabled people to get together and organize quickly; distribute thoughts as well as t-shirts and notecards and scripts; and kept highly contentious groups still talking to one another and still talking to the Lindens. Even if CopyBot or its successors succeed and utterly strip out of the world all the meaning and content, the social networks and solidarity that the Group Tools helped to create is something that could be sustained beyond the often disappointing and damaging experience of SL’s platform.
This copy machine labeled “CopyBot” is just a scare-toy — all it does is release the Baba Suck signs.
Random Writer
Nov 16th, 2006
Prok, you might want to try and ask again in the seller’s guild about someone seeing thier items for sale, Tuesday night, a couple said they did, and all we could tell them was file a DMCA.
As for this:
“Despite bot-panic, there was $526,788 spent in the last 24 hours, and they wanted to make sure they got their piece of it.”
I think this includes transactions made to cash out Lindens (of course no one can be sure since LL won’t even say exactly what it does or doesn’t do…. wait…). This also includes sales of the CopyBot (tongue firmly in cheek), but also includes all the land sales as well. You can count 40,000 of the Linden from selling my land, and possibly count it again when I cashed out.
Prokofy Neva
Nov 16th, 2006
I’d really like to get this documented, and get away from the hearsay. Sellers’ Guild is known for its leader browbeating yardalers and hysterically claiming that they are selling illicit copies; upon investigation, it turns out to be a false claim. If people saw their stuff for sale, can they swear it is due to CopyBot? Are they sure they didn’t have transfer on and someone is selling it for that reason alone? All of this bears investigation.
It’s like the 9/06 data-base hack. No one could really point to a documented case of hacking. There were like 2-3 people who said they thought something was missing. There were 2-3 people who said they thought a PayPal email phishing attempt was directly related to SL. But it couldn’t be proved and there was never any widespread, documented identity theft such as to really make the case for all the panic being worth it.
If the CopyBot is all it says it is, we’d expect by today to have thousands of cases of top-content makers’ stuff for sale at every yardsale in the metaverse. Where is it?
That’s not to say it may not all appear tomorrow or 7 days from now, but the JEVN scandal worked a lot faster to show documented cases way more persuasively than CopyBot is working.
There is a lot of *belief* this is happening, and not *documentation*.
The mass cash-outs that we feared didn’t happen. The Linden dropped a few points in value, but I’ve seen it crash far worse, usually over statements the Lindens themselves made, i.e. the first report that they were going to start printing Lindens to sell. The shock of the island price-hike made the LindEx dip too — it restored immediately in part because the Lindens put breaks on too much velocity of sales now, and they print Lindens or don’t print them to adjust the whole sinks/sources thing.
As for land being sold and people leaving in disgust, yes, it happens, but I have to report from direct experience that just as many people fresh come in the door and buy premiums and rent rentals as are leaving — maybe more. Stand in the WAs and infohubs and talk to people. That’s the picture of what is actually happening.
The ability of the content-creator class, as important as it is, to move markets and shake the society to its foundations is more and more limited. They like to think that when something crashes their world, it crashes all of Second Life.
That’s not the case anymore: the dog barks, the caravan moves on.
Prokofy Neva
Nov 16th, 2006
>I think this includes transactions made to cash out Lindens (of course no one can be sure since LL won’t even say exactly what it does or doesn’t do…. wait…). This also includes sales of the CopyBot (tongue firmly in cheek), but also includes all the land sales as well. You can count 40,000 of the Linden from selling my land, and possibly count it again when I cashed out.
Yes, the sales per day is a number we all wonder about the architecture of, and whether it counts things twice. But, it does go up, and membership and real log ons does go up.
You sold your land to leave in disgust…but someone else bought it who isn’t leaving in disgust.
We found one CopyBot vendor who claimed the $70,000 in sales. What, perhaps there was 4 times that in total sales? 10 times? Hardly the stuff of market moving these days in SL.
Random Writer
Nov 16th, 2006
“”"”If the CopyBot is all it says it is, we’d expect by today to have thousands of cases of top-content makers’ stuff for sale at every yardsale in the metaverse. Where is it?
That’s not to say it may not all appear tomorrow or 7 days from now, but the JEVN scandal worked a lot faster to show documented cases way more persuasively than CopyBot is working.”"”
That was gonna be my point! Anyone with half a brain will wait til it dies off before starting to sell anything they copied, and since they have full mod, they can change a few tidbits for free using Linden tools and boom, nothing totally distinguishes it.
“”"”There is a lot of *belief* this is happening, and not *documentation*.”"”"
Unfortunately, those that are documenting it are getting ripped up one side and down the other by people who are ‘experts’ because they saw the LibSL write up or the YouTube video. I’ve seen several people claim firsthand accounts of watching the Copybot in action fully restore to a copied av from previously, but they are getting trashed and bashed and lost in the shuffle by people who SWEAR they used the LibSL version. What amazes me and a point I saw in the forums, if it was changed to stop using the !quit command, how can people be so close minded to think it wasn’t changed later either?
“”"”The mass cash-outs that we feared didn’t happen. The Linden dropped a few points in value, but I’ve seen it crash far worse, usually over statements the Lindens themselves made, i.e. the first report that they were going to start printing Lindens to sell. The shock of the island price-hike made the LindEx dip too — it restored immediately in part because the Lindens put breaks on too much velocity of sales now, and they print Lindens or don’t print them to adjust the whole sinks/sources thing.”"”"”
We don’t know that. There is nothing that states what is on that webpage is true. As for the price of the Linden, nothing this major has happened (with LL’s initial approval) in the era where they have bought and sold thier own Linden’s. It would make obvious sense and in the interest of Lindens to remove the excessive L on the market at a time like this, when many people are cashing out (or at least claiming to).
“”"”As for land being sold and people leaving in disgust, yes, it happens, but I have to report from direct experience that just as many people fresh come in the door and buy premiums and rent rentals as are leaving — maybe more. Stand in the WAs and infohubs and talk to people. That’s the picture of what is actually happening.
“”"”
Ah, but at those infohubs and such… you can’t tell how many are really just alts. I won’t deny the number of people signing up is high now. However, what is suspect is thier own markings of new users. At one point the stats showed something like 20,000 new users within 2 hours (during the great million member watch). Another thing to look at is the log on within 60 days versus account creation. If those numbers are true, and ungodly amount of creations never once logged in. And frankly, looking at the log in screen, the average amount of users for the times of day is down by around 10%. Of course, we can’t *prove* that it’s due to Copybot or whatever reason, but it’s a logical connection. I can’t say for sure either that it won’t go back up. But the thing is, neither can you or anyone else, only time will tell.
Not everyone selling land is leaving, but they are quitting paying tier and premium subs to LL. Why pay taxes for a road that the county said they’d fix, but they let it not only get worse, but vandalized, then join in with the group of vandals?
Sure, you could say that someone came and bought my land, but judging by how many new parcels were put up, that market will come down a bit for actual land sales. The crux of the matter remains yet to be seen.
LL has certainly not had any mainstream bad publicity. You can bet though, if a major news outlet picks up the story of ‘when bad content happens to good avatars’, it will certainly (well hopefully) have a better investigation that armchair guessers, and may reveal even more that’s not great about LL. One could argue any publicity is good publictiy, but not when it comes to a user created world and that users creations are in jeopardy.
Random Writer
Nov 16th, 2006
And looking over the blotter:
Monday, October 30, 2006, in the region of Sandbox Island. Improper name – Suspended 14 Days
Wednesday, November 8, 2006, in the region of Ayakashi Island. Use of scripts to intercept $L. – Warning Issued.
Monday, November 13, 2006, in the region of Ahern. Using another account to receive stolen L$. – Warning Issued.
Monday, November 13, 2006, in the region of Ahern. Using shared password to log into account and steal Linden dollars. – Suspended 3 Days
They take improper naming more seriously than STEALING LINDENS, someone’s real life cash?? And by logical connection, someone was on two accounts, stealing Lindens then funneling them to themselves…
It’s things like this that each day, more people get more frustrated and in the long run, Copybot will only be another straw in the stack if they don’t get a handle on things.
Prokofy Neva
Nov 16th, 2006
There is no one in the SL people list with the name “Random Writer” and I generally refuse to get in extended debates with people who insist on me having my SL identity known, but hide behind a nick.
Read the next article up, Baba admits it was malicious.
It may even be a kind of hoax, it seems to me — the talk about deliberately making it seem as if furry heads were copying.
Baba demonstrated the CopyBot to me in Pi making his NPC alts show up and be botted. I looked at it, and some of the things obviously weren’t true copies; some were.
My understanding is that it has to come right next to you and copy you and that isn’t as easy as it might seem.
Everything you say about interpreting the LindEx has an antidote — that people are buying land, that they aren’t quitting, that as I said, the dog barks, the caravan moves on.
It would be folly to try to predict how this will play out. It might suddenly all plummet and crash.
I fly around a lot in world — I deal with dozens of people constantly every hour, I see these newbies who are not alts and are genuine.
Do you do this? I’m inworld, flying around, dealing with people, constantly, much of the day. And my first-hand impression is that the world has been knocked off its axis but it is spinning again.
PhilipLinden Clone #415
Nov 16th, 2006
To add a bit of spice to the meeting ensure that you have and are wearing your Philip Linden clone wear. If you feel the need to show your support of cloning ask any avi looking like philip for your own copy.
Support cloning and be Philip.
PhilipLinden Clone #415
Arthur Fermi
Nov 16th, 2006
Make the stupidity stop!
Its all been pointless silly, annoying and a witch hunt! I do not condone the CopyBot and utilties like that, its just this has been so over the top. The biggest cause of the problem wasn’t even so much the copybot, but the Sellers Guild, which I was once a member of. They reacted in their ussual way, Accuse, Condem, Insult, Over React, and Jump to conclusions. The Sellers Guild’s decision to make everyone in SL know about this only contributed to the problem, that damn annoying !Quit was the dumbest idea RL or SL I have seen since the invasion of Iraq! How many griefers, who would not have had the information about the CobyBot found out about it, then put that knowledge to use.
Then we have sellers closing the stores. Talk about an exercise in monumental stupidity! MMM, let me see, potential someone might copy my stuff, so I’m going to stop sellling it, yeah, thats it, I’m going to punish the people who are buying my crap! Brilliant! On the other hand had they bothered to pull their collective heads out of their ass they would have investigated how it worked first.
Perhaps if people stopped charging huge money for the stuff we make and made it more reasonable people wouldn’t be so tempted to copy them. 1500L for a dick? 500L for a suit, you have no manufacturing costs! Once its build you can sell it forever!
Lastly, a significant amount of textures the textures that are in SL have been stolen from RL buisness and web sites. I can see the logic there, he someone could steal my texture, you know, the one of the door I ripped off the Lowes web site.
Its getting hard to tell the who are the griefers!
Random Writer
Nov 16th, 2006
“”"”There is no one in the SL people list with the name “Random Writer” and I generally refuse to get in extended debates with people who insist on me having my SL identity known, but hide behind a nick.”"”"
Yet, you then continue to post to me, interesting isn’t it? I wasn’t aware that a single SL identity negates someone’s opinion. I’ll be more aware of that in the future. In the end, isn’t your SL identity just a nick as well?
“”"”Read the next article up, Baba admits it was malicious.”"”"
Yes, and? I’ve read Baba’s words. I don’t like them or him.. but what does that have to do with it?
“”"”It may even be a kind of hoax, it seems to me — the talk about deliberately making it seem as if furry heads were copying.”"”"
Tell that to the people who’ve been copied…. oh it’s just a hoax!
“”"”Baba demonstrated the CopyBot to me in Pi making his NPC alts show up and be botted. I looked at it, and some of the things obviously weren’t true copies; some were.
My understanding is that it has to come right next to you and copy you and that isn’t as easy as it might seem.”"”"
It was admitted by LibSL and the creators that Copybot was modded, how do you know which version you saw was the latest? Obviously, you don’t. And if Baba is demonstrating it, I wonder if even though it shows he’s an idiot, if he’s dumb enough to show you the full capabilities of that program. I know I was.
“”"”Everything you say about interpreting the LindEx has an antidote — that people are buying land, that they aren’t quitting, that as I said, the dog barks, the caravan moves on.
It would be folly to try to predict how this will play out. It might suddenly all plummet and crash.”"”"
Uh yeah… that’s pretty much what I was saying… are you arguing for the sake of arguing here? Each day, there are more and more people who’ve been here for a long time that are leaving. How do I know this? I’m friends with many of them personally and they’ve just tired of it. Is it the end of LL? Probably not for a while, but the clientele they are currently catering to isn’t the ones who pay the bills.
“”"”I fly around a lot in world — I deal with dozens of people constantly every hour, I see these newbies who are not alts and are genuine.
Do you do this? I’m inworld, flying around, dealing with people, constantly, much of the day. And my first-hand impression is that the world has been knocked off its axis but it is spinning again.”"”"
So you fly around and trust people to say to someone they don’t know (and some who probably do know you) to tell you whether they are an alt or not, especially if they lied to have the alt? I have a few alts and not a single person in world knows who they are. Why? Because it affords me to be totally different people and roleplay differently with each one.
BTW, it doesn’t take flying around in circles all day to know that alot of accounts created are alts, or that sign up numbers versus log in numbers is bad. The average person on my friends list has 3 total toons. There are close to 170 friends on my list. Not that that’s proof ALL are alts, which I’ve already said, but I’d bet 20L that more alts are created than genuine new accounts.
Tell ya what… *2 minute pause* I’ve created an account now for ya, my in world name is now Yoyoma Antelope. But trust me, it’s not an alt! Now you have an SL account to the writer. Bet that makes you feel better!