Sheep Warned After Violation of Dreamland Community Covenant
by prokofy on 10/04/07 at 2:35 am
By Prokofy Neva, Corporate Watch
Anshe Chung, owner of Anshe Chung Studios (ACS), creators of Dreamland, a popular Second Life residential and commercial region with more than 500 islands, has written to the leadership of the Electric Sheep Company regarding violation of her company’s covenant.
Anshe Chung announced to the Herald this evening that she is banning the avatar Grid Shepherd throughout the entire continent of Dreamland for covenant violations.
The Sheep have enabled their searchbot “Grid Shepherd” to roam all of Second Life freely. The ACS covenant applies to visitors as well as residents.
A search of “Anshe Chung” as owner of objects, as well as a search of some individual Dreamland tenants reveals that their items for sale — intentionally or not — are in the database at search.sheeplabs.com.
“ACS will have to step in to enforce Dreamland resident’s rights after violation by the ESC,” Anshe told the Herald.
“Anshe has explicitly forbid them [ESC] to enter Dreamland with robots again, such as CopyBot or the spy data gatherer of their search thing. [This] is not secret,” the Business Girl added.
Anshe, who is Second Life’s first real-estate millionairess, and has been featured on the cover of Business Week.
Nacon
Apr 10th, 2007
What? wtf.
Now youre telling me that Anshe just wanted some little attention by pulling this stupid stunt?
Nacon
Apr 10th, 2007
Actually now that I think of this lame shit… I bet she wanted to throw in a fee to unban Grid Shepherd so you can add your whole shop in the search. Catch 22.
Artemis Fate
Apr 10th, 2007
So Anshe is banning the same kind of bots that essentially she used to scan land way back win to find cheap parcels?
“‘ve never approved of land scanners, Anshe’s, Weedy’s, or anybody’s.” -Prokofy
Yet, when ESC does it you give a long ass article about how stupid and greedy they are, but when Anshe bans the same kind of bots she used, you only talk about how she was on the cover of business week and how popular she is?
I suppose that’s the “I scratch your back you scratch mine” mentality of the LBIC (Land Baron Inner Core) that pulls the strings of the lindens!
Trinity Dejavu
Apr 10th, 2007
News at 10! Anshe bans bot, w0000t.
Prokofy Neva
Apr 10th, 2007
Land scanners hoping to make money from real estate have an unfair advantage, and I’ve always made that point, and condemned it. I’m not in the land-sale business so it didn’t affect me specifically but it skewed the market for sure.
But landscanners didn’t grab the data off people’s land not for sale, nor their objects, nor put them into giant, searchable databases.
SLstats.com and this Grid Shepherd do that. Landscanners looked for land for sale to grab. It was for sale, and put in the for-sale list. People opted *in* to be in the for-sale list, and out in the world with a for-sale status consciously. That’s different than having objects you didn’t think were now available to the public on view.
The stuff the Grid Shepherd grabs isn’t opted-in.
Hope the Sheep are paying you overtime for being up this late, Artemis!
Mudkips Acronym
Apr 10th, 2007
Anshe Chung would probably “escort” a bot if she was paid enough.
Anonymous
Apr 10th, 2007
BOO HOO
Guni Greenstein
Apr 10th, 2007
Anshe and ACS have never operated land scanners or other LSL scripts to scan people’s land or sims. Of course this doesn’t really matter in the context of this discussion.
The privacy of our residents in Dreamland and the enforcement of the covenants, which are a promise to our customers, are extremely important to us. When a violation occures we don’t discriminate between who is involved, but equaly apply the rules to each avatar or group.
The sheep are a great group of very talented people in SL. They have done some amazing stuff and I am sure they are going to find a way to adapt their search project to take into account issues of privacy and copyright.
dandellion Kimban
Apr 10th, 2007
“I’m not in the land-sale business so it didn’t affect me specifically but it skewed the market for sure.”
Yes it did affected you, just the same as it affected me and everybody else. Landscanners’ impact on land market affected the whole SL’s economy. By the domino effect, it affected not only land but everything else that is on sale. One of the consequences was disappearing of the first land programme. That means that small enterprises are put in heavy position leaving most of the business to the companies. Second life is in the phase of imperialistic capitalism, killing the individual initiative, individual creativity and freedom of individuals or small groups that are of no interest for (or don’t want to be with) big money makers.
From the creative virtyual eldorrado, the world of our imagination, SL is turning to the world of big business.
Mark
Apr 10th, 2007
__The Sheep have enabled their searchbot “Grid Shepherd” to roam all of Second Life freely.__
You need to read and absorb the ToS madame.
thanks for letting me know
Apr 10th, 2007
Thanks for letting me know about Electric Sheep’s really useful service.
Other than that, it’s amazing to me what a bunch of incompetent technophobes seems to be living SL. Bots are here to stay, they are inevitable. Get used to it or get out.
Mike
Apr 10th, 2007
“Landscanners’ impact on land market affected the whole SL’s economy.”
Yes, they did so. In fact, they impacted it positively. Landscanners, like automated trading in real life, make the economy more efficient. And, like in real life, it’s the old, vested interests that oppose them.
dandellion Kimban
Apr 10th, 2007
Yes, they improved it technically. But, opposed to real life (hmmmm… I should reconsider that) technical improvements are not regulated by law nor any other mean of fair conduct that should lead to common benefit.
Yes, searc engines are great. Landscanners are great. But they are tools. And if we use those tools with no harm to other people and their property, privacy and integrity, if we use those tools in the line with the prosperity of the whole community it is great.
But, now we are talking about using landscaners and search engines for the profit of the few and contrary to the good of the rest of the population. And you should check the importaince of planned economy. Making big gaps between economical classes in one society (and SL is a society) leads to crash of the whole society. One needs not to be expert in economy to see that.
Using landscanners to get the first land the way land barons did is school example of missuse of technology. Idea of first land programme was to give an opportunity for every resident to get 512 m2 of land. That is opportunity to start small business and contribute to the world, to give its share of “our imagination”. Consequently, landscanners released by big money deprived new ressidents from that opportunity putting them in bad position over big money and technology. That missuse is a crime against common good. It is not technophobia.
Guni Greenstein
Apr 10th, 2007
Well said, dandellion. I think everyone here at Anshe Chung Studios will agree with you. In a space without governance, the biggest, strongest and the most ruthless can get their way by mere power and money, often at the expense of the general good. Unregulated automation as with landbots, Copybots, camping bots or search bots only leads to an arms race among coders and organizations who own coders. It dehumanizes virtual space.
A week ago a professional goldfarming corporation approached us to cash out several million Linden$ that they made from camping chairs. They used a multitute of robots on a whole PC farm. This was money resident businesses donated to support thousands of newbie players. The robots took it all.
I could envision a better future for Second Life than becoming a glorified 3D version of Core Wars.
margaret
Apr 10th, 2007
IT’S DARK SIDED! SO DARK SIDED! IT’S GODLESS!I REBUKE THIS NEW TECHNOLOGY IN THE NAME OF JEEESUS!
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5464505634137914176
Troy McLuhan
Apr 10th, 2007
I’m still on the fence about whether I like this new search thingy or not (although I have some ideas about how it could be improved), but one point confuses me:
Doesn’t Grid Shepherd (the ESC robot that scans for objects for sale) scan only mainland sims and avoid private sims? Aren’t all of the Dreamland sims private sims?
Ordinal Malaprop
Apr 10th, 2007
This is a terminology thing; it scans islands, but not ones which are restricted-access, i.e. “private islands” not “privately-owned islands”. There are things listed on there from Caledon for instance.
Lordfly Digeridoo
Apr 10th, 2007
I don’t see ESC profiting from this service; if anything, it increases commerce of items by allowing people to search for items that aren’t listed anywhere else.
Great example: Flashlights. I searched for flashlights a few months back on SLB and SLEX, and found nothing. On ESC’s Searchamaphone? 10. With links to each of the flashlights so I can buy them.
This is a bad thing… why?
ACS is essentially blacklisting a potential commercial tool “on behalf” of their residents, some of which I’m sure wouldn’t mind having extra exposure for their wares. This puts them at a competitive disadvantage.
Perhaps it would behoove them to move elsewhere.
shockwave yareach
Apr 10th, 2007
As a resident and part-time builder and scripter, who would stand to benefit from such a scanner as free advertising would improve my sales, I have to say that I do not like it. At all. While yes, I could potentially stand to benefit financially from it, the lag it produces and the intrusion into my personal spaces without permission is troubling and far worse than any gain it could produce.
Furthermore, all this will do is force people to turn their personal areas into Banned zones to keep out the intruders. All of SL will become a sea of red picket fences, making what was once a fun game of exploration and showing off into a Gulag where you cannot go anywhere or see anything anymore. Just to keep the bots away.
This is unacceptable to me. All these bots that cruise around, hopping from sim to sim and consuming the servers resources for free (even though I’m the one footing the bill for the sim) may be technical marvels. But just because something CAN be built doesn’t mean that it SHOULD be built. They aren’t in the Gray Goo class, but they aren’t far from it either.
I wonder if their is a way to detect that they are bots and not actually players, so that a self-targetting BAN CANNON in my home can remove it from my premises? After all, turn-about is fair play.
Artemis Fate
Apr 10th, 2007
“I think everyone here at Anshe Chung Studios will agree with you. In a space without governance, the biggest, strongest and the most ruthless can get their way by mere power and money, often at the expense of the general good. Unregulated automation as with landbots, Copybots, camping bots or search bots only leads to an arms race among coders and organizations who own coders. It dehumanizes virtual space.”
Perfect definition of Anshe Chung Studio’s rise to power.
So Anshe is denying the land scanners now? Interesting, I guess that would look hypocritical to ban an ESC object scanner that as far as I can consider, has no negative connotations, after all what privacy is this violating? Who’s putting up items for sale and going “oh you can’t buy this! This is my item! You’re violating my privacy by trying to buy it!” if they don’t want it sold they shouldn’t SELL it. And if they didn’t intend to sell it, they can always search their name in the ESC search engine and see if anything is for sale that shouldn’t be. As opposed to Anshe’s use of landscanners, which gave her an unfair advantage, lagged sims, and only served to help her attempts at land monopolies.
“Land scanners hoping to make money from real estate have an unfair advantage, and I’ve always made that point, and condemned it. I’m not in the land-sale business so it didn’t affect me specifically but it skewed the market for sure.
But landscanners didn’t grab the data off people’s land not for sale, nor their objects, nor put them into giant, searchable databases.”
No it didn’t, unlike the ESC one which has no real ability to make money, Anshe’s only worked for the self-serving purpose of giving her business an advantage over others and attempting to create a monopoly. If Anshe had put it into a giant searchable database, it would have been more fair actually.
“Hope the Sheep are paying you overtime for being up this late, Artemis!”
I find it interesting that you can’t seem to seperate a person and the group they belong too. I’m not even EMPLOYEED by the Sheep, i’m just an independant building contractor. But you constantly judge people more on groups they belong to and places they go, more than what they are actually saying and doing.
Artemis Fate
Apr 10th, 2007
“Furthermore, all this will do is force people to turn their personal areas into Banned zones to keep out the intruders. All of SL will become a sea of red picket fences, making what was once a fun game of exploration and showing off into a Gulag where you cannot go anywhere or see anything anymore. Just to keep the bots away.”
Have you even walked around the main-grid in the last year? It’s been a sea of red picket fences for a WHILE, for god knows what reason. You usually can’t 40 m of maingrid land before you get ejected by a security system or run into ban lines.
“At all. While yes, I could potentially stand to benefit financially from it, the lag it produces and the intrusion into my personal spaces without permission is troubling and far worse than any gain it could produce.”
If you want your “private space” to remain private, then don’t put up objects for public sale. They’re not scanning objects that aren’t for sale, and the only reason I could possibly assume you’d put up an object for sale besides a mistake, is if you were trying to sell it. So I don’t see any intrusion of privacy, you opted in by putting it up for sale.
In terms of the lag, I guess it’d have to be seen, I personally haven’t seen any evidence that proves it is or isn’t laggy. I figure if the bots are people, and the people are newbie avs with no clothes or skins or attachments, that just fly through the sim real quick, if you’re so worried about that lag, then you should be a prime crusader to stopping camping chairs.
Aki Shichiroji
Apr 10th, 2007
This is a particular disadvantage and disservice ASC is doing to its customers, especially those who have purchased or are renting land in their commercial sims.
ESC allows several levels of privacy through this service – from a complete opt-in to a complete opt-out – yet this heavy handed alarmist reaction has basically censored any free choice that business owners and consumers thought they could exercise.
I do rent land with ASC, and up until now I was satisfied with their service. This isn’t a reflection on the customer service representatives, but on the company as a whole… and I’m extremely dissappointed that Anshe has chosen to listen to the paranoid mutterings of a distinct few rather than consult the bulk of her actual customer base.
CENSORSHIP is NOT what I paid for!
Prokofy Neva
Apr 10th, 2007
Troy, it is scanning private islands as well. My tenants’ items from private islands can be found in there. Perhaps it is unable to get on the “hidden” islands that have no access.
I have a tenant who sells flashlights in different colours and even with animations, in Refugio. The word “flashlight” is put in the SEARCH PLACES ad, and you type it in and find it in SEARCH inworld. SEARCH in the client works fine — if the search word is set up. Perhaps there weren’t any flashlights back when Lordfly was looking; now there are, but you didn’t need ESC search to find them, they were in the regular Linden-made SEARCH.
External third-party searches may in time become useful — but they have to be opt-in. You have to chose to put yourself in them, and have ways of blocking data-scraping.
I think Anshe probably has to weight the advantage to a seller renting her land to be in a public beta versus the need to protect the privacy of tenants. I can well understand she’d opt for the latter.
So far, I see this is only being used for vindictive sellers and freebie zealots to go pounce on people whom they think shouldn’t be selling their freebies. They need to just unclick “transfer” and be done with it.
I fail to understand why wishing to protect privacy is technophobic, backward, or wishing to have Jesus save me. In fact, it is the tekkies who are backward and zealous and worshiping the game-gods and the Code is Law golden calf.
Humanity spent centuries with the Enlightenment and subsequent eras trying to wrest the individual away from the mob and the collective. Privacy is a relatively modern and progressive concept. Tekkies who remove it are merely throwing people back to the Dark Ages where they fall under power of kings and clerics — coders and marketers.
shockwave yareach
Apr 10th, 2007
“In terms of the lag, I guess it’d have to be seen, I personally haven’t seen any evidence that proves it is or isn’t laggy. I figure if the bots are people, and the people are newbie avs with no clothes or skins or attachments, that just fly through the sim real quick, if you’re so worried about that lag, then you should be a prime crusader to stopping camping chairs.”
For a sim to have people in Camping Chairs, the owner must decide to put in camping chairs. No bot flies overhead and bombs the region with chairs. You have an issue with the landowner and his chairs? Talk to the owner. The lag issue isn’t hard to compute. The more bots are in a sim, the more load they put on the server and the fewer actual people can be in the sim before it crashs. One bot, no big deal. 10 bots flying around? Problems. 40 bots? I seem to remember being able to play something called Second Life once upon a time…
And yes, I live on the mainland so I know exactly what you mean about all the Ban areas. (Try flying a vehicle through it someday – pointless) It is already troublesome enough without the remainder feeling that they have to do the same thing to prevent their stuff from being scanned. Bit by bit, things become less fun and more trouble than they are worth. I don’t mind people coming into where I hang out and admiring my work. But I certainly would take exception to a stranger barging into my personal quarters without asking first. The bots in question do just that.
Joshua Nightshade
Apr 10th, 2007
Firstly, the bot can’t scan private islands. So this move of Anshe’s is irrelevant.
Secondly, and perhaps more pertinent, is the fact that after searching “Prokofy Neva,” I found LOADS of freebies illegally resold by her. It was HILARIOUS! No wonder she’s screaming bloody murder, her palms were caught red-handed.
Dmitri Zelmanov
Apr 10th, 2007
How can someone violate a covenant that they are not party to? If ESC is not a tenant of ACS, they are not a party to the covenant and are therfore not bound by it. They would only be subject to SL TOS limitations.
Aki Shichiroji
Apr 10th, 2007
@ Joshua: Not quite true. Please do, if you will, a search for my name. All of the products that show up are situated on islands, not the mainland. I believe the ESC refers to actual *private* sims – IE: those which have been closed off to public access.
Nevertheless, I stand by my opinion that this action taken by ASC is the wrong course of action. Obviously island owners can do what they wish, but the ASC is also supposed to be providing a service here – IE: the provision of residential AND commercial land here – To issue a general ban on this service throughout it’s sims is harmful to it’s customers especially since it allows anyone who isn’t on their land to have a significant advantage over their competitors who ARE on Anshe land.
Guni Greenstein
Apr 10th, 2007
Artemis, I said it before and I say it again: Anshe Chung Studios never used land scanners. It is appalling to see how you continue to make false allegations about Anshe and our business, even after I corrected you.
Artemis Fate
Apr 10th, 2007
“I fail to understand why wishing to protect privacy is technophobic, backward, or wishing to have Jesus save me. In fact, it is the tekkies who are backward and zealous and worshiping the game-gods and the Code is Law golden calf.”
The issue isn’t whether some one is for or against privacy, it’s whether this is even invading privacy at ALL.
You DO opt in to the service. You opt in by making an object publically for sale. You can opt out by making it no for sale. These objects are up for PUBLIC sale, there’s no invasion of privacy there, as much as there’s an invasion of privacy by reading liscence plates on cars, they’re out there for everyone to see.
“The lag issue isn’t hard to compute. The more bots are in a sim, the more load they put on the server and the fewer actual people can be in the sim before it crashs. One bot, no big deal. 10 bots flying around? Problems. 40 bots? I seem to remember being able to play something called Second Life once upon a time…”
This is a serious stretch of a “what if!” situation. From what I understand, they used one bot and got the job done fine, why in gods name would they want to use more? I could say the same thing about people in general in SL, Well there’s one in the sim, but WHAT IF! There could be 2, or 10, or FIVE HUNDRED, things wouldn’t be able to move! Second Life would be gone! You could say that about ANYTHING. The fact of the matter is that it’s NOT like that, and there’s no reason to believe that it will be.
And again, a bot would spend what, 10-20 seconds in the sim scanning? As opposed to camping chairs, which negatively effect the entire sim for months? And have you ever tried talking to an owner of camping chairs? They don’t give a shit what you think, they’ll put down more camping chairs just to spite you.
Joshua Nightshade
Apr 10th, 2007
Aki:
You could be right; at the end of the day though the scanner isn’t doing anything beyond what an avatar can do themselves. Avatars can’t access private-private sims to begin with. Any person can go to any parcel and see what’s for sale.
An added benefit, however, is that it very nicely has compiled a list of people like Prokofy, who are ripping off content created by others to resell them as her own creations against their wishes. I can completely understand why she’d be so quick to get that cut off.
Joshua Nightshade
Apr 10th, 2007
Prokofy is quite the staunch defender of camping chairs. Those are worse lag than the bot, and at least the bot exists to do something beyond be a zombie.
Let the hyprokracy prevail!
Artemis Fate
Apr 10th, 2007
“Artemis, I said it before and I say it again: Anshe Chung Studios never used land scanners. It is appalling to see how you continue to make false allegations about Anshe and our business, even after I corrected you.”
Oh right, just like her claim that she never was an escort! *wink*
Lewis Nerd
Apr 10th, 2007
It has information on my land and objects there – and it’s completely wrong.
It has part of my stuff listed as on “Protected Linden land”, some of it in Coco’s Cottages – the other side of the sim – and the rest doesn’t even show up.
I don’t remember being asked if I wanted to be included in this “service” – it’s the same problem as SLStats, assuming you’re fine with it unless you opt to be excluded out of something you didn’t know you had to.
Lewis
shockwave yareach
Apr 10th, 2007
“You DO opt in to the service. You opt in by making an object publically for sale. You can opt out by making it no for sale. ”
So what you are saying is, that by not having any items on the land I rent for sale, the bot won’t come onto the land and scan them. Is that correct? That the bots will magically stay out of my regions so long as I don’t have anything for sale?
Methinks you are unclear on how these things work. Your solution would merely keep my property off their “for sale” list. It won’t prevent ESC from intruding into my home and making an inventory of what I own in the first place though. And that’s the issue here – my land and my inventory, not ESCs or ACs to peruse whenever they feel like it.
Joshua Nightshade
Apr 10th, 2007
“Methinks you are unclear on how these things work. Your solution would merely keep my property off their “for sale” list. It won’t prevent ESC from intruding into my home and making an inventory of what I own in the first place though. And that’s the issue here – my land and my inventory, not ESCs or ACs to peruse whenever they feel like it.”
OH NOES! So ban the avatar? You know what people can do in SL? Even banned, they have the ability to execute a complicated script that allows them to still see and index and archive and even CLICK ON everything on your parcel, and it only requires limited user interaction.
Okay, I’m probably going to get flayed for revealing this, but this information is too important to keep secret any longer. The residents of SL deserve to keep their privacy respected.
So here it is, the uber l33t way to find out exactly what’s on a parcel you’re banned from. /me takes a deep breath.
Ctrl + Alt + Shift, plus moving the mouse.
I have to go cut myself now.
Aki Shichiroji
Apr 10th, 2007
@Shockwave: Newsflash! *ALL AVS* recieve this information anyway, whether they ‘physically’ step foot on your property or simply rez near it! All this service does is sift through what is and isn’t for sale and posts a report. If you have issues with how this is done, perhaps you might as well ban *ALL* avs from your land – or perhaps you should just be a little more scrupulous about what you leave out of your inventory!
Lordfly Digeridoo
Apr 10th, 2007
Are people up in arms about Snapzilla? After all, millions of snapshots of people’s “private” property is on display there, with locations, descriptions, everything!
Any mob with crude technology is indistinguishable from a bot, as far as results are concerned.
Snapzilla = mob, SheepSearch = bot. Both techniques can be interchangable (40,000 people archiving stuff for sale every week, or a bot taking a snapshot of every parcel on the grid), but the result is the same.
So let’s ban Snapzilla and protect our privacy!
DOWN WITH CRISTIANO MIDNIGHT AND HIS PRIVACY-VIOLATING WEBSITE!!!
shockwave yareach
Apr 10th, 2007
Didn’t say ban an avatar. Didn’t say ban at all, actually. If you going to put words into people’s mouths, at least try to use the correct words.
And I’m well aware that an avatar can look and examine things, even at a distance. But if a person is sitting there, making a detailed list of everything I own, that person won’t be on my property for long. There’s no reason I shouldn’t be able to get rid of snooping robots, either.
My solution would be for LL to modify the functions that do the inventory and land scans so that they work only once per minute. This makes bots considerably slower and less appealing to all the wouldbe scripters who might be tempted to do the same thing as ESC and flood SL with bots. With bots so severely crippled, the problem will all but vanish.
Macphisto Angelus
Apr 10th, 2007
A word of caution:
I placed out 4 furniture items I got from a Yadni box in a workshop rental about 3 weeks ago. My wife noticed 3 of the items were for sale. Some sellers who donate items forget to take the for sale price off. I had a neighbor in Cartmel whose living room items were for sale as well because of this.
If you have freebie furniture (or any freebies for that matter out) be sure and check it and take it off of sale (something that before my experience never occurred to me) so that you do not come home one day and find your stuff gone or someone at your door accusing you of reselling freebies.
Joshua Nightshade
Apr 10th, 2007
“And I’m well aware that an avatar can look and examine things, even at a distance. But if a person is sitting there, making a detailed list of everything I own, that person won’t be on my property for long. There’s no reason I shouldn’t be able to get rid of snooping robots, either.”
And this is my point. They don’t have to be on your property to still compile that detailed list.
ESC is giving people the ability to opt-out by saying “If you ban this avatar from your parcel, we won’t go and index anything.” They’re giving you something that by default anyone in SL can do anyway.
As for your suggestions on the bots, good luck. LL isn’t interested in restricting any aspect of them.
Tygarys Soyinka
Apr 10th, 2007
ESC makes a new scanbot alt that Anshe has not banned in 3…2…1…
Joshua Nightshade
Apr 10th, 2007
In other news, Prokofy is actively moderating and deleting any and all comments left on her blog that prove she’s reselling freebies.
Way to go champ!
Aki Shichiroji
Apr 10th, 2007
Tygarys> THat’s not the point. They probably won’t, nor should they. The fact is that the only thing Grid Shepherd really does, YOUR av – YOUR client, does automatically as an area rezzes in around you. The difference, from what I understand is that it simply compiles that information and filters out anything that isn’t for sale. It’s nothing you or I couldn’t do given enough time and patience.
Joshua Nightshade
Apr 10th, 2007
Aki: Ding ding ding.
Cocoanut Koala
Apr 10th, 2007
“Well said, dandellion. I think everyone here at Anshe Chung Studios will agree with you. In a space without governance, the biggest, strongest and the most ruthless can get their way by mere power and money, often at the expense of the general good. Unregulated automation as with landbots, Copybots, camping bots or search bots only leads to an arms race among coders and organizations who own coders. It dehumanizes virtual space.”
Very well put, Guni – exactly how I feel, only put better than I could have. And I agree with Dandelion also.
coco
Cristiano Midnight
Apr 10th, 2007
Even though nothing with prevent Prokofy from blowing a gasket and dropping an impressive number of f bombs, so much of this drama could have been avoided if ESC had simply made their new search engine opt in. Why is that so hard to comprehend? Find in SL is opt in, why force people to have to opt out? It does speak to a certain amount of arrogance and lack of respect on their part, or at least lack of foresight. You will often find that people who would gladly have opted into something will opt out simply on the principle of being forced to participate.
I think the search engine has potential (though without searching vendors, it is pretty useless at this point), but it is marred by not asking for permission. Do they have to ask? Nope. Should they have as a matter of politeness and community relations? Definitely.
Prokofy Neva
Apr 10th, 2007
>In other news, Prokofy is actively moderating and deleting any and all comments left on her blog that prove she’s reselling freebies.
Uh, no, I’m actively moderating and deleting all attempts by Joshua Nightshade to stalk me by evading IP bans with anonymizers. Proof positive that he *is* a creepy stalker. Anyone who keeps trying to get back on a blog where they have been repeatedly banned for cause, for breaking the rules, which in my case are about those who cause RL or SL harm, needs to understand they are merely adding to their crime file with this kind of behaviour.
I’m proud to sell freebies, and I’ve blogged about it and held meetings about it inworld for years. Anyone is welcome to harangue me about my freebie selling. I’m unashamed, and I will go right on selling my freebies. Anyone who is unhappy about their freebies being sold needs to uncheck “transfer”. After all, it’s this same bunch haranguing people like my tenants right now, telling them to turn off the for-sale signs on their objects. Let THEM turn off their for-sale signs too *shrugs*.
Prokofy Neva
Apr 10th, 2007
@Shockwave: Newsflash! *ALL AVS* recieve this information anyway, whether they ‘physically’ step foot on your property or simply rez near it! All this service does is sift through what is and isn’t for sale and posts a report. If you have issues with how this is done, perhaps you might as well ban *ALL* avs from your land – or perhaps you should just be a little more scrupulous about what you leave out of your inventory!
No, Aki, that’s wrong. It doesn’t matter that you *can* scrape. It matters whether you *should*. Ethics matter. And scraping data which various people do with av radars or store greeters or such doesn’t mean you then POST IT. I have a greeter that greets people who come to my store to give them information, and posts me the information. That way I can see what percentage of people who come actually then get a rental, and I can keep trying to adjust and change and make it easier for them.
But that device and its powers doesn’t mean I get to chase all those people and spam them with a notecard that they didn’t get themselves of their own free will. It doesn’t mean I can take that list generated by the store greeter and post it on the Internet, or mine it for data to someshow scrape for these innocent people who have a social contract with me: we are greeted by your store greeter which records us, but that means we are merely getting information about how to search for rentals which we came here for looking for anyway, it doesn’t mean we also cede to you the right to aggregate, post, publicize that we are at your store.
This is just common sense and decency. Your pushing and pushing on this lets us know you aren’t willing to concede either, in the name of technology and power for the tiny group of technical cadres over the rest of us.
Prokofy Neva
Apr 10th, 2007
>A word of caution:
>I placed out 4 furniture items I got from a Yadni box in a workshop rental about 3 weeks ago. My wife noticed 3 of the items were for sale. Some sellers who donate items forget to take the for sale price off. I had a neighbor in Cartmel whose living room items were for sale as well because of this.
>If you have freebie furniture (or any freebies for that matter out) be sure and check it and take it off of sale (something that before my experience never occurred to me) so that you do not come home one day and find your stuff gone or someone at your door accusing you of reselling freebies.
This is my main objection to this device of the Sheep’s. As soon as I ran a search on Ravenglass Rentals, I saw literally hundreds of items from my tenants on their rentals which were set to sale and not intended to be sold.
I really heavily resent being told by scornful tekkies that the problem is my tenants or me, and that we have to turn off for-sale on items. The problem is that we were not notified of this giant scrape by greedy marketers. We’re not the stupid ones, they are, for violating our privacy.
Opt-in is the only way to go.
Lordfly Digeridoo
Apr 10th, 2007
“And I’m well aware that an avatar can look and examine things, even at a distance. But if a person is sitting there, making a detailed list of everything I own, that person won’t be on my property for long. There’s no reason I shouldn’t be able to get rid of snooping robots, either.”
This is also how you opt-out; you ban the bot (Grid Shepard). Suddenly, the problem goes away…