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.
Joshua Nightshade
Apr 10th, 2007
It only shows Aimee drinking if you assume any time she mentions alcohol it’s a sign that she’s drinking a beer. And considering the majority of said posts were when Aimee was expressing frustration over something, IE, “this is so annoying I need a margarita to deal with it,” Prokofy’s being… dare I say… literalistic.
If I was having a drink every time I said the word, I’d be drunk a lot.
Tenshi Vielle
Apr 10th, 2007
Seriously, you guys need to stop talking about Aimee. She’s not even here to defend herself, and probably doesn’t care to be. So you shouldn’t care either.
Prokofy Neva
Apr 10th, 2007
>It’s hardly relevant that you put yourself back on now since you had enough time to hide the freebies.
>No, 15 people specifically said they saw your site with a link to my real name and real website. 15 people, many of whom were lurkers to SC and uninvolved with your psychoses, said they saw the site, not the screenshot. 15 people even discounting Aimee and Flip and Cris.
>Knowing you would argue this anyway, I specifically checked out the items by hand to ensure that, 1, you didn’t make the items, 2, you were the owner, and 3, the items on sale weren’t individual copies but set to sell themselves indefinitely. Ding ding ding.
Stalker. Dong dong dong dong. I haven’t scurried aroud to hide anything, because it’s all in the open in my known and highly-visited public areas lol. And the prim counters, flamingos, and sure are on “copy” and not just one. Hell, yeah. Jauani’s chair is on single copy tho.
I don’t have to say a thing about Aimee and any drinking issues; her blogs and posts say it all for me.
Gosh, Tenshi, I think it’s touching how concerned you are about stalkers. I suggest you go visit SC where much of the time, when people start thread after obsessive thread about me, I’m not there to defend myself either.
As Uri says, if anyone is concerned about libel, they need to contact their lawyers and local judges. See you in court!
Joshua Nightshade
Apr 10th, 2007
You say stalker, I say “fact-checker.” I wouldn’t want to accuse you of something that wasn’t true; I know that’s a foreign concept to you, but mea culpa.
You honestly haven’t annoyed me to the point where I’m interested in investing any money to crush you. I’m hoping you continue to run around calling CEOs of companies “fucktards” though and suggesting their employees need to be slapped. It’ll happen eventually and I’m happy to talk to anyone when it does. :p
Prokofy Neva
Apr 10th, 2007
Oh, interesting thing to see. My data is still at:
http://search.sheeplabs.com/
There’s no way that adding or subtracting things — if that was the case, which it isn’t — would be reflecting yet. It’s not updating.
Check it out with the search term Prokofy Neva and see exactly how many free things I have for sale: 3
I don’t see Barnes table though, gosh. What does that mean??? Did somebody buy it or something???
Yes, I will sure as hell run around and call CEOs of companies “fucktards” if need be, and when relevant, I sure as hell will suggest that their employees need a virtual slap — hell, yeah! They do!
See you in court!
Joshua Nightshade
Apr 10th, 2007
Bring it on then, chicken.
William Ward
Apr 10th, 2007
I see this controversy and acknowledge it.
My only point: I wish you people would be as upset or moreso, and more active, about the invasions of privacy by the US government, as you are by the actions of a business against an emergent virtual space with property law that is not nearly as defined as that which is jeopardized by US law.
But otherwise, this is all very interesting, cutting edge stuff.
Cocoanut Koala
Apr 10th, 2007
Well, now I’m missing from it, and I want to be on it!
coco
Joshua Nightshade
Apr 10th, 2007
They probably deleted you by proxy.
Anonymous
Apr 11th, 2007
Since Google came up in all this I can’t help but jump into the fray. Google has been– and is currently being– taken to court over the opt-in issue (and related copyright concerns). Prokofy is right- at stake is our right to privacy. Also at stake is the future shape of the “social contract” as it pertains to an individual’s creative work and the ability of society as a whole to access and benefit from it. That this issue arises again and again in SL is a sign of the times.
The Author’s Guild argues in part that author’s and publishers should have to opt-in (rather than opt-out) for their work to be scanned. From their perspective, the scanning of a book is a violation of copyright.
Google and it’s library partners contest that like the web (where their right to proceed with indexing has been accepted as in the public interest, given that we can avail ourselves of robots.txt and noindex, nofollow) the realm of the printed word is too vast (particularly given the number of orphaned works). The next iteration of the library catalog that they envision cannot be created with opt-in. They argue that their use is transformative. Moreover– and here is the lesson for ESC– they respect copyright (or adhere to the social contract) by limiting the portions of text delivered from works that are not opt-in to snippets (only enough to help the searcher assess relevance).
There is no question that search in SL stinks. I’ve seen post after post ranting about it. You’re left struggling to hunt through vague seller’s tags and traffic skewed results to find the individual stores that might sell the animated squawking peacock (or what have you) that you’ve been dreaming of but can’t manage to make. Kudos to ESC for actually trying to do something about it. There is no doubt that better searching is in the public interest. That said, the brutal fact is that naming and tagging items will always be in the hands of the original creator– garbage in garbage out and all that. Vendors and boxed items don’t seem to be represented at all. ESC’s bot is an attempt to solve a real problem- but the execution is wanting.
Where ESC mis-stepped was in its overzealousness. There are two issues here:
1. Should I have to opt-in before Grid Shepard comes zipping through my home? It surely creeps me out to be reminded (yet again) how little privacy the information age gives me in SL or in RL. Can I balance my revulsion in the interest of better access to consumer goods? As William Ward so rightly points out, it sure ought to be easier than accepting RL use of data mining by corporations and the US Gov’t (see: http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0209/p01s02-uspo.html, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/20/AR2007032001604_pf.html and http://www.crmbuyer.com/story/B1aFr5A76OlrfD/Nevada-Senate-Panel-Moves-to-Ban-Prescription-Data-Mining.xhtml ). Frankly, I’m not too happy with either one. The blurring distinction between my virtual and real self only heightens my discomfort. Like Prokofy I am not willing to lie down and accept the invevitablity thesis. Our actions or non-actions on issues such as these will have very real consequences down the road.
Like publishing a book, the argument can be made that marking an item for sale takes the object out of the private domain and places it into the public, where different rules apply (copyright expires, for example). But does deciding to sell an item mean that I relinquish all rights to decide how and to whom I sell it? I suppose I should start a petition for a “sell to specific avatar” box on items and pray I don’t mistakenly click the wrong box for two seconds.
2. Having failed to opt-out should random strangers be lead to teleport into my home? Hell no!
OK- ESC is out there doing what information merchants do. Like Google, they may even have had good intentions in the core of their little corporate heart. But sending me straight to someone’s patio in search of the 1L hummingbird feeder from Parrot Island is irresponsible. Like Google, ESC needs to limit functions for those items that are not opt-in. If I really need “Gay, Bejeweled Nazi Bikers of Gor” (sounds good, btw) surely I can IM for it?
An Engine Fit For My Proceeding
Apr 11th, 2007
Searching, Publicity; How Well It Can Work, How Well It Should
As one with a long term interest in both Automated Information-Collecting Agents and the Analysis of their Data, I was most fascinated to see the arrival of the Sheep Labs Search, created by the Electric Sheep Company. Actually, I was a little startled…
Io Zeno
Apr 11th, 2007
Normally, I am not gung-ho on issues that invade my privacy, regardless of how “cool” some technology is. I don’t subscribe to, if it’s on the internet, it’s a free for all. We all have very sensitive information housed on servers all over the place, CC numbers, home addresses, email. Just because this data can be mined, doesn’t mean it should.
But. I would like everyone to remember this search bot is in BETA. And no one is mining your personal inventory, this is stuff you have checked off “for sale”, rezed on your property. They had to go live to test it’s effectiveness and find bugs. If you don’t want someone tp’ing into your property put up a security system, because there is nothing to stop anyone from coming in *now* and poking about your things with or without this search.
Yes, this may mean doing a search on yourself to find out if you have freebies with “for sale” still listed on them. It’s a hassle. But honestly it is worth the effort. If you sell things this is a free classified listing. It is, potentially, a much better search engine, not dependent on LL. If you are a consumer this will be a better way to find exactly what you are looking for, no one can list their entire inventory in SL Search. But this can find the one thing you sell that someone is looking for, specifically.
As for opt-in, like Google, it would have never taken off if people did it that way. Instead there are methods now in place to block spiders if you don’t want to come up in a search, which is the same thing as opting out, and frankly a lot more work.
And finally, if this could be done, it was going to be done by someone. I would prefer it was done by ESC than some big corporation or a con artist looking to fleece residents. So what if they are using it to help their business profile, it is free to use and they are willing to listen to people about it’s development.
Cocoanut Koala
Apr 11th, 2007
I’m back on it. Must have been some kind of a glitch.
coco
Eric Maelstrom
Apr 11th, 2007
I’m confused about one thing. Lordfly, did you not say on the 31st of last month, on your blog (http://www.lordfly.com/wordpress/?p=198)
“So, this is where I say I’m sorry and will labor extensively to never publically [sic] argue with Prokofy Neva ever again.”?
Those internet search bots can be troublesome.
Prokofy Neva
Apr 11th, 2007
WWW, I’m totally on the issue of the government’s intrusion, trust me. And that’s why I care about its virtual equivalent. One doesn’t have to trump the other, or have to sequence behind the other. Why? Just because you can’t always get the RL US government out of your bedroom doesn’t mean you have to foresake getting the Electric Sheep out of your Second Life bedroom. Both venues are valid areas of struggle, and areas where you must always struggle because government always encroaches. You don’t necessarily make them moral equivalents, because what’s at stake is bigger in getting the US government’s big eavesdroppers and trackers out of your hair, but since part of the way that big government and big business will be tracking us all better will be online and in virtual worlds, you have to care about that, too, and not be dismissive of it “because it’s a game”.
I bother with virtual worlds because I take the position that we’ll all be spending lots and lots more time in them in the coming decades, and they will truly merge with real life in many ways — in mundane ways and dramatic ways. I’m more convinced of this than ever, watching the developments with SL and big business, attending VW 07 and reading Ted Castronova’s “Synthetic Worlds” which is a must-read for trying to build the categories for thinking about this (I disagree with a lot of what he says from his ludologist perspective but I can’t deny that the thinking and categorization that has gone into this topic is superb.http://www.amazon.com/Synthetic-Worlds-Business-Culture-Online/dp/0226096270/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/104-0903636-0779955?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1176328457&sr=8-1
Just as you instinctively cringe at the thought of Hillary in your refrigerator or Barbara Bush peering at your reproductive organs, so you want to cringe over this, too. If you don’t, and you say, oh, it’s all the Internet and it’s all a big lulz and a lifelog, well, hell, I beg to different. It’s no different in kind or case.
Prokofy Neva
Apr 11th, 2007
Io, I’m sorry, but just because it’s beta isn’t an excuse. All of SL is a constant rolling beta. Sorry, but that’s lame.
Furthemore, I don’t like this concept that “better our son of a bitch, than somebody else’s son of a bitch” as an argument. I’m not impressed by the Sheep’s cavalier attitude first to Copybot, where individual Sheep in particular were very callous about concerns the community had, and very dismissive of the implications for the world. This only seals that sense of callousness about the world that I really do not like. A big corporation in fact might be counted on to be a lot more sensitive and just plain less greedy and ambitious, as they’d be already very secure in themselves and their position as mega corps with gadzillion eyeballs anyway.
>And no one is mining your personal inventory, this is stuff you have checked off “for sale”, rezed on your property. They had to go live to test it’s effectiveness and find bugs. If you don’t want someone tp’ing into your property put up a security system, because there is nothing to stop anyone from coming in *now* and poking about your things with or without this search.
Once again — and I don’t know why we have to keep saying this and why it should even be necessary — people did not put this stuff for sale VOLUNTARILY. They didn’t leave out stuff or rez it or not check it becaue they didn’t know that they just came into the radar of a giant scoop that was dumping their shit into a public databse. Seriously, it’s totally fucked to keep blaming PEOPLE for this when it is not their FAULT this happened but the fault of greedy beta-testers eager to look good in the eyes of existing and future clients, who couldn’t be bothered to take the time to do opt-in.
They could have demo’d the fabulousness of their search with opt-in just as easily as opt-out. They could have just had the thing hoover their little friends frist, like Barnesworth and Ingrid’s islands and their own Sheep islands and showed that first, and that would have been impressive enough. By putting in everybody’s stuff *in error* they have only created bad blood. They’ve suddenly inconvenienced everybody concerned about a TV left out for sale that will be stolen, or some embarassment. They’ve opened up tons of yardsalers and freebie resellers to vilification and harassment (and I see the creator fascists on SC and elsewhere have made hay of that — so very SL, truly).
So no, there is nothing good about this. The idea that everybody has to inconvenience themselves for the greater glory of Forseti and Cristian and their clients really bites, I’m sorry.
And the idea that you can scornfully and viciously say to people, “Oh, if you don’t want someone to tp into your property, put up security” is just plain ridiculous. People DO have security up. They DO have orbs and bans. But Grid Shepherd can reach around a property ban, and has done so. Only aFTER the fact are you told to ban him, and you can only do that effectively at a continent level, because banning him from one parcel means he can sneak around and cam in from Linden land or the next parcel that did let him in. So much for banning the bot.
People don’t enter SL with a social contract with bots that are enabled to scrape everything off them for some company’s commercial use. I really want to end that deeply offensive and infantile sense of entitlement that these script-kiddies have about people’s information.
I also refuse to climb on the bandwagon here and kick the Lindens’ search. It works good enough. It makes sales every day. People find the key words that work for their sales. People use the searches on third-party sites with vendors as well. And word of mouth and the forums.
Sure, build up a better search. Do it not by inconveniencing, intruding upon, or destroying the world.
Joshua Nightshade
Apr 11th, 2007
That’s bullshit Prokofy. The bot, just like an avatar, CAN get around parcel bans. The Sheep have said it won’t. SLproxy passes parcel banlists to the bot and it discards items retrieved from that list.
Yet again another example of you talking about things as fact that you don’t understand.
Io Zeno
Apr 11th, 2007
Prok, I was referring to the concern that people could click the link and tp onto your property, not the bot. But the fact is, I or anyone else can stand outside property with a security system and take inventory of everything on it with my camera and mouse right now. And list them on a website if I so desired.
Yes, I agree they went all out with this rather than taking a more gentle approach. Perhaps it could have been handled better. However, I very much doubt that a large RL corporation would be any more sensitive to this issue, in fact I suspect the latter, it would just suddenly be there, without asking for any feedback and a link to opt out.
If I thought this was only going to help the Sheep and be of no use to anyone else I would be in agreement with you on this. But I strongly disagree. The ability to “google” for an item within the now very large commercial population of SL will be of great benefit to both sellers and consumers. Just like I can google for some very specific item I want and find all the stores selling it, the prices, the descriptions, to be able to do that in SL will be of use to everyone.
This is what LL always wanted SL to be, they never hid their intentions. A 3D web. Your store is like any online store on a website. People can search and find what they want from all the “websites” within SL.
And just like Google, it is now up to you to opt out. Having the rules changed overnight is never pleasant. If it was pointless I could understand the resistance. But I am willing to take the few minutes of my time to either opt out or run a search on my name to see if I have any “for sale” items rezed on my property that shouldn’t be for something I believe will be of use to me and most people. And really, most items still marked for sale are freebies, probably copyable and the worst that could happen is someone takes a copy of your chair. Content creators who see a freebie still listed at $1 aren’t going to bother you.
Personally, I am vehemently against the sale of freebies so you aren’t going to get any sympathy from me on that issue.
Prokofy Neva
Apr 11th, 2007
No, that’s not true. The bot CAN and DOES scan private islands. Type in “Ravenglass Realm,” the name of my island, and see all my tenants who forgot to turn sale off. Perhaps what they intended to say *cough* was that it can’t scan *hidden* or *closed* islands on access only or something. But let’s please stop reiterating this falsehood that it doesn’t scan private islands: it clearly does.
No need to keep reading Joshua’s incorrect statements, I guess he works for the Sheep now, or he’s been dipped in the Sheep dip.
The bot can defeat parcel bans because it can scan 96 m2 like any bot does, and read even what it is banned from, as I can clearly see it returning finds on parcels I know have “access only” on them.
Whatever other tricks it might be taught, like taking somebody’s name out, or passing lists, or stuffing something up its ass, I don’t care. It’s clear to me that my “opting out” did not remove from the database information that it scraped from me. MY LAND is still scraped and I can’t unscrape it because it is creating an opt-out *not by parcel owner, but by object owner or creator* duh.
I want it off my lawn, now.
Once again Io, you are arrogantly and belligerently trying to force-feed arguments that don’t fit to what the world is, and the social contract is and making completely fake analogies.
Sure, I can stand on a parcel and go and click on stuff, camera zoom, make inventory. But I can only do that *manually*. I wouldn’t have any *interest* in doing that to all my neighbours unless I was a peeping Tom. Even if I were a peeping Tom, I’d have a limit to how much I could peep and write down and then upload manually to a web page.
So I’m sorry, but it’s just plain *fucking retarded* to claim that a manual peeping Tom’s information, that is ‘in the public domain’ (it isn’t really) then enables you to extrapolate that it’s ok to engineer something to magnify and multiply that a million times and upload it.
It’s taking a peeping Tom’s actions — which are NOT repeat NOT socially acceptable to people as ample experience has shown — and automating it and integrating it to the Web.
It’s NOT ok for a peeping Tom to inventory stuff. Some little asshole dweeb can do that, but he’s not socially acceptable. And a bot doing it just because it *can* is no more socially acceptable.
Your failure to grasp that shows that you suffer from the typical tekkie lack of empathy for *people*.
I don’t give a good goddamn what Linden Lab “always wanted”. We all pay for them to “always want” what they want. And we should have a say in their “always wanting”. They can “always want” their turning of a world into a facile and stupid and idiotic giant commercialized MySpace if they like, but then let their venture capitalists pay for it. As long as they still have PEOPLE on the grid who pay for it JUST AS MUCH, they need to heed those people.
If the ability to Google an item is going to be helpful isn’t disputed, but then it can behave like even the rest of the Internet behaves regarding Google. Google does not inventory my bathroom. It inventories my webpage. It knows its limits. It doesn’t even reach into my hard-drive and inventory that.
Greed is the only thing driving this, and it’s about the greed to be first, best, cool, groovy to get clients. And that’s not acceptable. It’s not how you make a world. It’s how you make somebody’s goddamn 3-D resume or ad brochure hanging on the Internet.
As I’ve indicated, there are many, many other social and political issues which in typical tekkie fashion have been bulldozed into the ground with the rush to worship the latest script-kiddy thingie.
1) Why should SEARCH be pwned by one company? Already some people are wondering why there are people’s objects simply missing. Do they delete their enemies? Already some people are wondering how on earth some creators show up first. Do they boost the ranking of their friends behind the scenes? These are legitimate questions to ask about a feted little group that has enjoyed privileges and promotions by LL and big business.
2) Why shouldn’t the Lindens make search? They more than any other entity is in a position to spider the grid. They *already* spider it most likely. They already have a web page where you can search for stuff. They need to fix it so it has Boolean searches with proximity so it makes sense. They already have space on avatars and on land that have a check-off box, “publish to web”.
*A CHECK-OFF BOX PUBLISH TO WEB*. That lets me know that the LINDENS, as messed up as they are sometimes, had the kindness and courtesy to make it OPT-IN if someday, when they have their web thingie up, I want to be in it — OR NOT. I can CHECK THE BOX. They’ve thought this through. The Sheep haven’t.
Google is not a mere “opt-out”. Because I can decide if I want my private items on my hard-drive to be uploaded to my webpage to be found by Google or not.
My land in Second Life is like my hard drive. It is my owned server space. I refuse to accept any analogy that calls it “a web page”.
I love it how tekkies who claim to be atheists often fall for paganism or other cults, and tekkies who tell you scornfully that you had better “opt-out” and you had better “take stuff off for sale and watch what you rezz” can suddenly pick up their skirts like giddy grandmas and tell you that you can’t resell a freebie *that is set to transfer* and is available to sell.
This is total hypocrisy. If you’re going to sneer at everybody and tell them to “opt-out” of the Google reach and the spider, then you had better sure as hell tell your little creator fascists to “opt-out” of transfer: they need to uncheck the box, duh.
If you’re going to sneer at people that they left something out for sale and it’s their problem if it gets in Forseti’s maw, then you can sure as hell apply the exact same logic to telling your creator fascists to UNCHECK transfer. Not rocket science. Stop making other people do your viral ad campaigns for you.
How on earth do you square THAT circle Io? Because it’s something that benefits your and your little tekkie and “artist” friends? That they make freebies to look good as “helping newbies” or helping mankind? Bullshit. They need traffic to their stores and visibility and enhancement of their reputation.
No one should have to be inconvenienced by this thing one whit. Get it out of our faces. It’s not right.
Artemis Fate
Apr 11th, 2007
Ahahaha that was more hilarious than normal, Prokofy.
First:
“Once again Io, you are arrogantly and belligerently trying to force-feed arguments that don’t fit to what the world is, and the social contract is and making completely fake analogies.”
Then, as if trying to give examples of this:
“No need to keep reading Joshua’s incorrect statements, I guess he works for the Sheep now, or he’s been dipped in the Sheep dip.”
“Why should SEARCH be pwned by one company? Already some people are wondering why there are people’s objects simply missing. Do they delete their enemies? Already some people are wondering how on earth some creators show up first. Do they boost the ranking of their friends behind the scenes? These are legitimate questions to ask about a feted little group that has enjoyed privileges and promotions by LL and big business.”
“My land in Second Life is like my hard drive. It is my owned server space. I refuse to accept any analogy that calls it “a web page”.”
“Greed is the only thing driving this, and it’s about the greed to be first, best, cool, groovy to get clients. And that’s not acceptable. It’s not how you make a world. It’s how you make somebody’s goddamn 3-D resume or ad brochure hanging on the Internet.”
Those are some GREAT examples of arrogantly and belligerently trying to force-feed arguments that don’t fit to what the world is, Prokofy, way to go!
“Google does not inventory my bathroom. It inventories my webpage. It knows its limits. It doesn’t even reach into my hard-drive and inventory that.”
The search engine doesn’t inventory your bathroom or your hard-drive either. It inventories only the things you put out in public view, very much like a web-page. If you didn’t want it seen, then you shouldn’t have put it up in FULL and PUBLIC view. Your land is not your hard-drive, your land is your web-page. That analogy is so false, it’s incredible.
I don’t think anyone summarizes your problems better than you do when you try to insult others.
Cocoanut Koala
Apr 11th, 2007
If people don’t want their freebies for sale, they can jolly well check off the “no transfer” box like everyone else.
coco
Prokofy Neva
Apr 11th, 2007
>The search engine doesn’t inventory your bathroom or your hard-drive either. It inventories only the things you put out in public view, very much like a web-page. If you didn’t want it seen, then you shouldn’t have put it up in FULL and PUBLIC view. Your land is not your hard-drive, your land is your web-page. That analogy is so false, it’s incredible.
My land in Second Life which I pay for by paying purchase price and then tier to Linden Lab is my land — it’s my hard drive. Forseti doesn’t pay tier on it. He doesn’t get to access it. I don’t wish to put up red ban lines and security orbs. That doesn’t mean he can grab aspects of it for his business. It’s mine. The objects on it, the people on it, the land description, the traffic information — all of it belongs to me as the payer of the tier. of course, it ultimately belongs to the Lindens, and that’s a major problem because they tend to hew to the same asshole tekkie point of view as the scornful types in this thread, but by and large they are tethered: they have a TOS that says I have a reasonable expectation of privacy and I generally get it.
When I put something out “in view” it’s for my use, or the use of people who come to my land. It’s not intended to be in SEARCH or CLASSIFIEDS — the normal social constructs for putting someting “in public”.
All the Grid Shepherd did was violently, unilaterally, vulgarily redefine “public” to mean “whatever I grab for Forseti”.
It’s not INTENDED to be available for Forseti. It’s simply not. If he grabs it, through his bots, he’s trying to forcifully steal something that isn’t his. It isn’t in the public domain, because I operated in a context, with a construct, that had meaning, to those around me and to me, which was that it was not public. In that context, and that construct, if I *wanted* it to be public, I checked off “search” or “publish to web”.
You don’t get to overthrow people’s meaning, constructs, social contracts so easily, without consequences. You sure don’t *personally* get to do that to me, because I come back right into your face and will holler and call you names and publicize your bad deeds if you do that.
I’m done talking sense to you, Io, because I don’t know whether you are sufficiently tethered to reality as to have a productive and intelligent discussion. That is, you may be living in your mom’s basement, you may be a college kid, or you may be someone obsessed with hanging out on the Internet, or obsessed with technology, and you may not have a job, kids, interests, concerns, and responsibilities that give you a more well-rounded take on life that involves grasping of basic social and political realities and constructs and considerations, and what people need to have a society.
I think a lot of the problems of these discussions could be summed up by that lack of tethering that arrogant tekkies have to any sort of reality that isn’t served up to them by servers. Most people don’t put technology at the center of their lives; they put other people at the center of their lives.
Montana Corleone
Apr 11th, 2007
Well it has disclosed my house address which I keep private, only listing stuff there (and providing handy tps into the middle of my house – fair warning my security bot will eject you), and not the very same identical items I do have on public sale in my shops. In fact it doesn’t list a single one of my shops, except for an old one which doesn’t exist any more.
How cool is that? Not very. Also a huge invasion of privacy, against ToS disclosure, and breaking the laws of several countries.
They are very lucky they are in a different country to me, or my lawyers would be eating them for breakfast. One thing for sure, I will never ever use an Electric Sheep Product again, and sadly that will include sl boutique.
I have abuse reported them, and I hope Linden perma bans them, but they are probably too lily livered to do anything to their chums.
Joshua Nightshade
Apr 11th, 2007
“Well it has disclosed my house address which I keep private, only listing stuff there (and providing handy tps into the middle of my house – fair warning my security bot will eject you), and not the very same identical items I do have on public sale in my shops. In fact it doesn’t list a single one of my shops, except for an old one which doesn’t exist any more.
How cool is that? Not very. Also a huge invasion of privacy, against ToS disclosure, and breaking the laws of several countries.”
You really don’t know anything about privacy laws then.
VictoriaK
Apr 11th, 2007
Does all this ranting mean that Prok won’t be sponging beer from ESC anymore?
Curious minds want to know?
Io Zeno
Apr 11th, 2007
*sigh*
First off, I wasn’t being “arrogant” or “belligerent” and I certainly wasn’t “sneering” at anyone. I’m definitely not going into your guesses at my personal life, which has nothing to do with my opinion on this other than I use SL.
My point about my ability to personally inventory anyone’s property was that this is all publicly available information. Just like a web page. *Unlike* your hard drive or even your personal inventory. You are of the *opinion* that objects rezzed on your property are analogous to files on your hard drive. That simply is not the case, regardless of whether you pay for that “land”. It is like renting space on a server and what is in html form and made viewable, versus stuff that is stored there and locked from view by permissions. What is rezzed is “viewable” by anyone or any bot. Just like a published page is viewable to Google. Unless you “opt out”.
It *does* matter what LL wants because it is their platform. They will decide how this will go and their desire has always been to be a 3D web, not a virtual homestead or a game. Not even a community. I regret this because I have serious reservations about the future of the “metaverse” especially with LL running it. But LL is the company that owns SL and they will take it where they like regardless of what you or I or anyone else thinks of it.
LL opensourced the client precisely because they either cannot, due to resources, or do not want to do this kind of work on the platform themselves.
Any company or individual *can* do this, the Sheep just did it first, they may not be the last, either.
This has nothing to do with me or my friends, it is common sense. I am not “pro-bot” I have argued with people who have the view that anything that can be done should and if it’s technology it must be pursued, ban one bot it’s a slippery slope, I disagree with those arguments. But I am not going to resist true progress that I believe will be of benefit to people.
Look at this purely from the viewpoint of a consumer, which I am, so I will use a recent example. I was looking for a particular kind of plant. Wading through the results of search, after looking all through SL exchange, my only recourse was to visit as many plant shops as I could to look for it. In SL this is quite the night of work, tp’ing from one place to another, waiting for 20 minutes for everything to rez, searching through dozens and dozens of plants for what I wanted. In vain, I gave up.
Now, what I am looking for may be out there. If I could search the inventory of everyone with a store I could find it. But I can’t so I don’t have my plant and they don’t have a sale. This is why this method of searching is superior to SL search.
As for freebies, maybe you came into SL with fist fulls of cash but I didn’t and neither do most people. I relied on those freebies to get started in SL like most newbies do. If I saved lindens or bought them and found out that the dress I paid $300L for was available for free at Yandis I would feel ripped off. Because that is that it is, a rip-off and a con.
Io Zeno
Apr 11th, 2007
Just wanted to add, you weren’t even responding to me in your second post, that was Artemis, quoting your responses to me.
Mem
Apr 12th, 2007
Montana, you may want to save yourself a bit of time before consulting a lawyer, i.e. read the TOS.
Cite which privacy laws are being broken if you will? As for data protection, again, read the TOS.
From the TOS,
“You also understand and agree that by submitting your Content to any area of the Service, you automatically grant (or you warrant that the owner of such Content has expressly granted) to Linden Lab and to all other users of the Service a non-exclusive, worldwide, fully paid-up, transferable, irrevocable, royalty-free and perpetual License, under any and all patent rights you may have or obtain with respect to your Content, to use your Content for all purposes within the Service.”
Additionally there is no land in SL, you are subscribing to a service. You have no property rights, there is no property, only server space and a shared asset storage system that you subscribe to and agree to use under that subscription service’s terms of service. You by using SL have already agreed to the above TOS and hence data freely available by your choice to flag it for sale would seem to render most of your lawyer threats moot even if you were living next door to LL.
I really rather doubt as its on its face not even a tos violation and opt out options are available you’ll see any action by LL or any credible legal efforts other than internet lawyer histrionics and empty threats.
Prokofy Neva
Apr 12th, 2007
Mem,
We’ve already been over this on other threads here, and on my blog, and everywhere. You are incorrectly, falsely, and misleadingly quoting TOS that has nothing to do with this issue — nothing.
You also understand and agree that by submitting your Content to any area of the Service, you automatically grant (or you warrant that the owner of such Content has expressly granted) to Linden Lab and to all other users of the Service a non-exclusive, worldwide, fully paid-up, transferable, irrevocable, royalty-free and perpetual License, under any and all patent rights you may have or obtain with respect to your Content, to use your Content for all purposes within the Service.”
This has to do with the *use of content*.
That means that you can buy it and use it. But that’s about *content*.
What Grid Shepherd takes isn’t content, it’s *information* — and *private information* not given to him freely.
Elsewhere in the TOS, we see the Lindens’ *very different* attitude toward the unuathorized grabbing of information – so unlike the use of content.
Elsewhere, the Lindens state very clearly that all residents are entitled to reasonable privacy. And indeed, it’s reasonable to put something out on your lot and not find out five minutes later that a bot uploaded it’s name, price, and location, when you didn’t put it in a store and in SEARCH to sell.
Elsewhere, the Lindens *prohibit* the publication of chat logs in world. Of course, they don’t overrerach and ban those who put chat logs out of the world on third-party websites — and thank God for it! But they do establish a notion of privacy which you seem unable or unwilling to concede.
You’re not a lawyer, and I’m not a lawyer — or if you are a lawyer, you’re talking through your ass, as this part of the law simply is NOT established rpt NOT established by precedent case law in decisions in courts of law. It’s just speculation. I have just as much validity speculating that the Lindens should interpret the bot problem under their privacy definitions, as you have claiming they can interpret it under their content defitions.
My acts on my lawn, my placement of my items on my lawn, are a conversation. They are not content. They are a conversation.
When you and the other fucktards can get it through your head, that it is a conversation, not content for you to grab, a conversation to be had in a community of people with social norms, then your and the businesses you prostitute yourselves for may do better.
Prokofy Neva
Apr 12th, 2007
There’s nothing histrionic about the fight for privacy. You’d sure as hell fight the fight if it were the government on your lawn or in your bedroom. So don’t have double standards for virtual worlds.
>Additionally there is no land in SL, you are subscribing to a service.
Um, yeah, I’m subscribing to the service of emulated land and emulated private property. Deal with it.
>You have no property rights, there is no property, only server space and a shared asset storage system that you subscribe to and agree to use under that subscription service’s terms of service.
And that server space cannot be accessed by bots by other users of the service without my consent
>You by using SL have already agreed to the above TOS and hence data freely available by your choice to flag it for sale would seem to render most of your lawyer threats moot even if you were living next door to LL.
No, because I didn’t place it in SEARCH or CLASSIFIEDS of my own free will, it became “searchable” because of an unreasonable search and seizure.
>I really rather doubt as its on its face not even a tos violation and opt out options are available you’ll see any action by LL or any credible legal efforts other than internet lawyer histrionics and empty threats.
We are rehearsing the larger Metaverse. You’ll see.
Prokofy Neva
Apr 12th, 2007
>Does all this ranting mean that Prok won’t be sponging beer from ESC anymore?
>Curious minds want to know?
I don’t sponge beer from ESC? I go to Metaverse Meet-ups to which I’m invited where I paid the organizers for the dinner, like everybody else did.
If they invite people over to their houses for beer, that’s hardly sponging.
Of course, these ideas of consent and opt-in are utterly lost on you.
Joshua Nightshade
Apr 12th, 2007
Oh, Prokofy sponges beer, boy does she ever.
“You’re not a lawyer, and I’m not a lawyer — or if you are a lawyer, you’re talking through your ass, as this part of the law simply is NOT established rpt NOT established by precedent case law in decisions in courts of law. It’s just speculation. I have just as much validity speculating that the Lindens should interpret the bot problem under their privacy definitions, as you have claiming they can interpret it under their content defitions.”
Wrong!
“You also understand and agree that by submitting your Content to any area of the Service, you automatically grant (or you warrant that the owner of such Content has expressly granted) to Linden Lab and to all other users of the Service a non-exclusive, worldwide, fully paid-up, transferable, irrevocable, royalty-free and perpetual License, under any and all patent rights you may have or obtain with respect to your Content, to use your Content for all purposes within the Service.”
It’s funny you quote this, as this is the point in the ToS that rules your claims about the freebie transfer button invalid.
Specifically,
“under any and all patent rights you may have or obtain with respect to your Content, to use your Content for all purposes within the Service.”
This clause allows people to USE content, not RESELL it and CLAIM it as their own. It grants a license for another person to use the content UNDER the “patent rights” that the original creator has originally. A checkbox that states “transfer” doesn’t change this clause. The IP rights are still inherent to that original creator and do not change without a specific, written amendment to that license.
When you and the other fucktards can get it through your head that it is a conversation, not freebie content for you to grab, a conversation to be had in a community of people with social norms, then you and the businesses you prostitute yourselves for may do better.
Reality
Apr 12th, 2007
Prokofy – you are showing more and more that you don’t have a damn clue as to what ‘rights’ you have here. Let me spell it out for you in a very simple manner:
You set the item out. Anyone can get the item name, information, and list price by simply – are you following here? – right-clicking the object and hitting edit! You do not have a say in the matter.
Dusk
Apr 12th, 2007
You know, there’s a picture of my real-life house on Google Earth, you can even see my car in the driveway and my boyfriend in the pool and me lounging by it!!! I did not consent to this, there is no opt-out for GoogleEarth and this is CERTAINLY a greater invasion of my privacy than Grid Shepherd could EVER be.
Reality
Apr 12th, 2007
Oh yes – in addition, you do not have a ‘lawn’ in Second Life as you cannot live in Second Life. to do so requires you to upload your very consciousness to the Internet, which is by current technology …. impossible.
Welcome to another harsh example of reality.
Mem
Apr 12th, 2007
Prok wrote:
“There’s nothing histrionic about the fight for privacy. You’d sure as hell fight the fight if it were the government on your lawn or in your bedroom. So don’t have double standards for virtual worlds.”
Apples and oranges, in this case there is no government (there is no lawn, there is no bedroom either by the by), it isn’t in anyone’s bedroom or on their lawn and the information gathered freely available to anyone in SL already, i.e. not private. The only reasonable expectation of privacy you’d have in SL concerning in world objects is on a private estate with a active white list (private island). Anywhere else in SL object data is publicly accessible merely by virtue of existing. Such is the nature of the system, period.
Prok wrote:”
>Additionally there is no land in SL, you are subscribing to a service.
Um, yeah, I’m subscribing to the service of emulated land and emulated private property. Deal with it.”
Oh emulation of a thing or act makes said thing or act real then in your eyes? Well have fun dealing with that, I prefer the reality of the situation. The reality is there is no property in SL in regards to land, only server space and as that is the reality, existing laws as to its use apply, as do internal rules (the TOS) about the use of objects existing within the system.
Let’s repeat that as you seem to blend and misrepresent what people say in this regard. I’m referring to the supposed privacy as to objects’ information not your personal player information. Unless those objects are on a private estate or in your inventory it’s information is publicly available to any Tom, dick or Jane bot AV coming by. Your personal information as to a player is not and never has been unless you chose to make it available yourself (like using your RL name in nationally publicized periodicals in conjunction with your in system name for example). Two separate issues and as much as you seem to want to marry the two through your own histrionics this search engine only collects information about one very narrow set of parameters, objects that have been set for sale, or in other words items expressly public. Additionally it allows multiple methods to opt out completely and will likely be further refined in the future as to functionality and privacy, do bear in mind it is still in a beta release.
It does not invade your inventory and gather information about your detachable penis or love bed, it doesn’t go into LL’s services and collect personal information about you the player behind Prok. All these overly dramatic, nigh on hysterical and exaggerated claims and scenarios you put forth really undermines most what you have to say even if you were in the ball park to begin with, which sadly you aren’t.
Want your items to remain private within the system? Only two ways to do so that are even technically possible even if this search engine didn’t exist. Get a private, invisible, white list activated estate (i.e. private island), or use your inventory. In your previous analogy about hard drive space, it is your inventory that would far more qualify as such and your “land” (server space) in sl much more a published webpage than your computer’s hardrive simply because of the nature of the system.
Prok wrote:”
>You have no property rights, there is no property, only server space and a shared asset storage system that you subscribe to and agree to use under that subscription service’s terms of service.
And that server space cannot be accessed by bots by other users of the service without my consent”(sic)
Simply wrong, sorry. All that information is freely accessible to any bot or any AV in the service, by the very nature of the system itself. What isn’t accessible and again would more fit your hard drive analogy of earlier would be the contents of you inventory.
Prok wrote:”
>You by using SL have already agreed to the above TOS and hence data freely available by your choice to flag it for sale would seem to render most of your lawyer threats moot even if you were living next door to LL.
No, because I didn’t place it in SEARCH or CLASSIFIEDS of my own free will, it became “searchable” because of an unreasonable search and seizure.”
You made available information about those objects by rez-ing them in the system, such is the nature of the system (I’d refer you back to the quote portion of the TOS I posted earlier; “…to use your Content for all purposes within the Service.”). Further you made it expressly public by setting their flags for sale.
Prok wrote:”
>I really rather doubt as its on its face not even a tos violation and opt out options are available you’ll see any action by LL or any credible legal efforts other than internet lawyer histrionics and empty threats.
We are rehearsing the larger Metaverse. You’ll see.”
I suppose we will, I know where I’d put my money as to the outcome however.
Anonymous
Apr 12th, 2007
>You set the item out. Anyone can get the item name, information, and list price by simply – are you following here? – right-clicking the object and hitting edit! You do not have a say in the matter.
Yes, I do. That’s where you are wrong. “Anyone” can’t get it. In fact, “anyone” does NOT get it. Only avatars or bots that come up and deliberately scrape it get it, and that’s not “anyone getting it,” that’s malice aforethougt. Protections against them must be built in. They didn’t operate in a mass way before; there’s no reason to tolerate them now. Banning them is not enough. As I’ve suggested, they should be licensed.
Prokofy Neva
Apr 12th, 2007
>You set the item out. Anyone can get the item name, information, and list price by simply – are you following here? – right-clicking the object and hitting edit! You do not have a say in the matter.
Yes, I do. That’s where you are wrong. “Anyone” can’t get it. In fact, “anyone” does NOT get it. Only avatars or bots that come up and deliberately scrape it get it, and that’s not “anyone getting it,” that’s malice aforethougt. Protections against them must be built in. They didn’t operate in a mass way before; there’s no reason to tolerate them now. Banning them is not enough. As I’ve suggested, they should be licensed.
shockwave yareach
Apr 12th, 2007
3d web:
When the system is actually stable, not under the control of a single company and its hardware/software, usable, extendible and capable of evolving as new tech and new services come online, THEN and only then will it be a potential new interface for the world wide web. Right now, LL can’t even handle 50,000 people on its service at the same time. That is nothing compared to the tens of MILLIONS who are on the Web at any given moment.
Single points of failures are bad, mkay? And LL is literally constructed out of them. Next Generation Web interface? Not if everything in the planet has to go through them, it won’t be. Right now it is only a game and a novelty – it has far far to go before it can become a business tool.
Artemis Fate
Apr 12th, 2007
It seems that the metaverse is in desperate need of my new invention. People’s objects they deliberately put up for sale are in danger of being sold! So I’ve invented -THE LOCKTIGHT!-, for a measly 300,000L$ this system is 96m large, covered in security bots, and 12 impenetrable walls. You place your for sale object in the center of it, and set all of the 13 different security codes (12 for the walls, one for the security bots), if a violator comes within 256m of the system, alarms will go off, mounted auto-turrets will be fired, they’ll be abuse reported and the real life authorities will be informed. You NEED to keep your “for sale” items safe and not sold! This is not public information people, no-one should be seeing or touching the things you put up for sale, protect yourself from stalking griefer rapists who want to steal your for sale stuff by buying it/seeing it!
Order now, check and money order payable to “you’re a dumbass industries”
Reality
Apr 12th, 2007
Wrong Prokofy – anyone can get the information. Joe Dirt, mentor Alice, Liaison Ted, Griefer Greg, Baron Bob, Newbie Ned. You have a mouse? Can you right click, hover over a selection pie then left click a command? Then you too can check these properties.
It is done all the time – you do it too, when filling out abuse reports pertaining to an object.
In the future, please get your facts and realities straight before attempting to debate with a person that actually knows what they are talking about.
Joshua Nightshade
Apr 12th, 2007
ARTEMIS.
Please convert me from homosexuality, now.
Reality
Apr 12th, 2007
To prove my point Prokofy:
Help Island Public 188, 133, 22 (PG) – Help Island Public
Object: FREE wings
Description: Donated by Obunnywan Manimal
Creator: Blue Linden
Owner: Brian Linden
1 Object made up of 2 Primitives
Object contents set for sale at L$0.
Now, I could go through all the tabs and post up all the information it allows a person to view – including the contents of the object itself. I will not do this however as I’ve made my point: Anyone can view the information.
Hell, some people use this method when shopping to peek inside content sale objects to see what they are getting for the price listed.
Reality
Apr 12th, 2007
Coordinate typo – 188, 113, 22
Cat Cotton
Apr 14th, 2007
Personally I think it’s Anshe’s land and her right to do so. If she doesn’t want outside bots on her land. That is her right as the land owner.
Cat
Prokofy Neva
Apr 14th, 2007
Um, no, Reality, you haven’t gotten any “facts” straight nor have you made any point. Not in the slightest. Not at all.
Your arrogant literalism and over-confident tekkism is preventing you from seeing the obvious truth. Or rather, it is a hidebound ideology you’re bent on promoting at any cost.
The obvious truth is any human can manually pick up information, sure. Any *human* can *manually* pick up information *with volition and reason*.
But only a bot can spider over *the entire grid* automatically and pick up *millions of pieces of information* and only a corporate entity can then *sustain publishing it up on the Internet*.
Artificial intelligence is something that people always think of as “out there” and being “developed” and “a boon”. What artificial intelligence is, however, is merely the crystallization of one human’s will, or group of human’s will, over other human beings.
In a game, a game-god makes an AI in order to interact with players. The player, if he is in this or that “faction” can beat that AI boss or not. The game-god puts the boss in to follow a routine and to make the game fun. If he follows some rote set of rules, the player loses or wins. Now these AI bosses are being put into an open-ended world without any controls, enabling not the game-gods, but outside third-parties who refuse to be regulated to trump everybody’s will.
An individual live human has a set of restraints on him, and even if he is immoral, there is the restraint of his time and physical ability. He can’t roam the entire world, it’s physically impossible.
So those two features — a) scope and b) publishing and c) will are what make an individual’s scanning actions and a machine’s scanning actions completely different. Completely.
UTTERLY DIFFERENT. The two acts are profoundly unlike each other. One involves a human scanning something in his immediate vicinity, with some tethered purpose. If a tethered purpose of good, i.e. to buy something that is for sale, then it’s sustained by the community. In fact, that’s why objects can be scanned by mouse-hover, to see them, copy them, buy them, admire them, all individually tethered good purposes. Among the purposes might also be bad purposes like theft of something accidently left to sale or being a peeping-Tom. But an individual with that malevolent purpose would have to scan through so much stuff and take so much time that it wouldn’t be worth it. So *scale* acts as a fence against his bad will.
The manual nature of the world is what has kept it moral up to this point. The advent of CopyBot and Searchbot makes it an immoral world, a world that is now susceptible to the most blind, unfeeling, and malevolent forces. I’m surprised nobody is seeing this profound ontological change in our world. Uri? Please.
Duh? Much duh?
THAT is what is very different. It’s one thing to have the information “out there” for this or that manual human being, or even this or that avatar radar detector someone might have in their home, for example, with a 96 m2 radius.
It’s quite another thing to have a hostile entity scoop it all up *en masse* and make it available just for one commercial entity. Not only quite another thing; on a different SCALE completely. Even HiroPendragon, though he refuses to contemplate the moral dimension of these autonomatons, can conceive of a practical consideration — too many of these bots, and the degrade the entire grid first and foremost for their own performance, and then later, as a distinct secondary consideration for “metaversal service agencies,” for everybody else.
Like all cases of false moral equivalence; like all cases of false analogy; YOUR case slips up entirely on the matter of SCALE and also the matter of REMEDY, just to mention two.
When I have a peeping tom outside my house — a manual, human peeping Tom, I can a) appeal to his reason — he’s a human, like me, and perhaps might be persuaded to behave better and b) ban him off my land instantly as I see what he’s up to and c) get my neighbours to ban him.
With Grid Shepherd, I a) can’t appeal to his reason, he has none b) can’t ban him successful because of his aggressive, sweeping powers to go sweeping EVERYWHERE and c) I can try to get my neighbours to ban him, but it will be too late,he will have swept.
And as I’ve utterly trumped your argument here, I’d kindly ask you to STFU further on trying to “put me in my place”. You, as a little anonymous fucktard on a forums unable to put even your *Second Life* name on interventions you obstinately and densely call “Reality,” lose every argument you start, just by starting them with that dumb-ass name.
Prokofy Neva
Apr 14th, 2007
No need to buy your expense dumbass product, Artemis, invented with malice and hatred, when the check against the malice and hatred of a corporate sponsored bot is to regular the bot, and have our land and avatars, that already have little checkboxes the Lindens thoughtfully put in for some future project, actually work.
These two boxes say “publish to web”. If unchecked, then scanners, the Lindens, or corporate scanners, can use the information on the person or land. If checked, they cannot gather it.
I hope the Lindens will institute this cheap and easy solution to the bot problem soon.
Artemis Fate
Apr 14th, 2007
Oh if only we were in Prokofy Land, where Prokofy is the supreme ruler, justice is decided only by his words, and statements like these “And as I’ve utterly trumped your argument here” or “Um, no, Reality, you haven’t gotten any “facts” straight nor have you made any point. Not in the slightest. Not at all. Your arrogant literalism and over-confident tekkism is preventing you from seeing the obvious truth. Or rather, it is a hidebound ideology you’re bent on promoting at any cost.” would provoke more than laughter to the populous, or for medical examiners and psychologists to raise an eyebrow and start furiously scribbling in prescription slips.
So no, luckily the mass population has not crossed that twisted little border into Prokofy Land, and we all still remain in this little place quaintly known as being sane. Where not every automatic tool is a malicious agent of destruction, searching to use it’s vast powers against you. They call it “data mining” for a reason, as it’s very much like mining for coal, the resource is available and in the public, anyone could get at it, but a machine can do it the most efficiently. Take for example, you say that you would prefer one person doing it, because you can’t reason with a machine (though it should be noted, you can’t reason with a person either), and because a machine can do it so wide en-masse. So what if ESC hired newbies for however many sims there are, and paid them a bit of money to catalogue everything in one sim. It gets you the same result as with a machine, it’s just a LOT less efficient.
Your problem seems to come from the machine angle of it, which isn’t surprising as you’ve shown to be quite the Luddite, ironically based in a virtual world online(but you are after all, a slew of contradictions), that somehow once a machine gets involved, the process becomes malicious. I.E.: “It’s quite another thing to have a hostile entity scoop it all up *en masse*” and “The advent of CopyBot and Searchbot makes it an immoral world, a world that is now susceptible to the most blind, unfeeling, and malevolent forces.”, yet there’s no actual justification for the line of thought, simply that it “just is”, and we are, I suppose, to accept that automatically.
Yet the machine isn’t evil, it’s completely unthinking, what the possibility you’re worried about is the people who might use that data. The problem here is, those people could ALWAYS use that data, because that data is out in the public and pretty much always has been.
“With Grid Shepherd, I can’t appeal to his reason, he has none”
I know the feeling.
Artemis Fate
Apr 14th, 2007
“These two boxes say “publish to web”. If unchecked, then scanners, the Lindens, or corporate scanners, can use the information on the person or land. If checked, they cannot gather it.”
I don’t know if you ever bothered to read the little question mark pop up next to the publish to web button, but it’s functions are entirely different from what you think (or hope) they are. “Selecting the publish on the web option allows us to publish your name, image, and ‘about’ text on the Second Life Website.”
“No need to buy your expense dumbass product”
Oh sorry, were you trying to buy that and disappointed you couldn’t find it? ‘Fraid to tell you that it is what is known in the scientific field as a “Joke”, or in layman’s terms “not serious”.
Pablo Andalso
Apr 14th, 2007
It’s quite silly how people are complaining about a bot scanning and providing information, given the search-based nature of “Web 2.0″. SL is a “closed system,” in that you have to sign up, etc., etc., but that doesn’t really technically distinguish it from the World Wide Web as a whole–the LL ToS are essentially on the same plane as those of an ISP. Therefore, how is Grid Shepherd any different from the Google Bot? It may be disconcerting to find Google link to a “private” blog (as has happened to me) or [gasp] use up server resources without paying, but its ubiquity has reached the point of defining the internet. So, for comparison, what if Google opened up another tab in their website called “Google SL”? All trademark issues aside, this wouldn’t be any different from that other invader of privacy, the automated HTTP bot that serves their main search engine.
Maybe the technical disjuncture (that distinguishing factor) arises from the fact that we don’t see SL as just another internet service. We see it as a facsimile of Real Life, where privacy is based on trust and legal restrictions. On the World Wide Web, privacy is entirely technical. A private website has a guest-list, not a ban-list, and anything else is fair game. However, selective permission (as opposed to selective banning) is opposed by the vast majority of the people here.
If you really want to stop a bot from violating perceived (but not actual) privacy, you have to make the privacy formally defined, and therefore enforceable. Perhaps an estate may have a covenant that says “you can’t go in and look at peoples’ stuff without their permission,” or “this is a ‘residential’ sim, so all plot owners must use guest-list style security.” You may have a policy like that of nearly every physical store on the planet: prices cannot be reported outside the store without permission from the management. Policies like these, if they were actually included as Terms of Service for a particular parcel, would be enforceable. Banning a bot from an entire region without consulting each individual parcel owner (or explicitly announcing it in the covenant), as Anshe Chung Studios has done, is an example of the powers that be acting above the law. Basically, if you do indeed control “the law,” as ACS does, you should implement a broader policy that all tenants agree to upon renting. Imposing a policy outside of the lease agreement would be illegal in Real Life and is, at the very least, very annoying in Second Life.
Or perhaps parcel owners could have those “please type the text from the above garbled image” things that so many websites seem to be using before someone would be allowed to enter a given parcel. It would be dreadfully annoying, but it would certainly rid the grid of bots until they implemented optical character recognition.