Sheep Warned After Violation of Dreamland Community Covenant

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.

Comments

[Nacon]

What? wtf.

Now youre telling me that Anshe just wanted some little attention by pulling this stupid stunt?

[Nacon]

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]

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]

News at 10! Anshe bans bot, w0000t.

[Prokofy Neva]

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]

Anshe Chung would probably "escort" a bot if she was paid enough.

BOO HOO

[Guni Greenstein]

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]

"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]

__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]

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]

"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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

"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]

"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]

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]

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]

"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]

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]

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]

@ 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]

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]

"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]

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]

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]

"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]

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]

"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]

"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]

@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]

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]

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]

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]

"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]

ESC makes a new scanbot alt that Anshe has not banned in 3...2...1...

[Joshua Nightshade]

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]

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]

Aki: Ding ding ding. ;)

[Cocoanut Koala]

"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]

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]

>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]

@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]

>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]

"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...

[Aki Shichiroji]

I'm really tired of hearing about residents who shouldn't have to be responsible for their own objects.

If you've bought an object, it's up to you to take care of what you own, whether it's on your own land or not. If you've left the checkbox for resale checked... clearly you don't care enough about what you buy to keep an eye on it. And if some normal user just happens to come along and notice that it's for sale and they like it, you get what you deserve if it does get sold.

Clearly residents need to be more aware about what they purchase and do their due diligence if they truly treasure what they acquire.

This search tool is MERELY THAT - a tool. It can be used by both those with or without scruples - though hopefully those *with*. Heck. If you were a user who was really concerned that *oops* one of your items might have been set for sale, perhaps you could use this TOOL to check and make the appropriate changes.

[Joshua Nightshade]

"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*."

I'm at work, you idiot, and I don't even have an "anonymizer" installed. Are you really that idiotic? I was using the same two computers this weekend that you "banned" months ago with your spurious claim that I was threatening you. Go back and look at the comments, the IP addresses are always the same. Some spoofage!

I don't read Prokofy's blog. I have stopped reading and posting to Prokofy's blog, completely. I merely return when I am given notice that Prokofy has written a lie about me, which is my obligation to correct. I am completely happy to have ceased participation in Prokofy blog, completely.

[shockwave yareach]

Lordfly: Ah, so it's my fault then. I should have been able to send email to myself from the future or something, telling me about the existance of this bot, its name, and what it does. Perhaps your crystal ball is functioning properly and can tell you the names of these bots well before they run rampant on your territory. But alas, my scrying glass is in the shop for its 50,000 mile service. That's the trouble with these cheap Magic imports from Middle Earth; getting replacement parts is a pain.

So if you would be so kind as to tell everyone here the names of ALL the bots - ESC and the copycats which are sure to follow - which exist now, tomorrow or within the next year, you and your Magic Future-seeing device will have performed a great service to everyone and we can all take care to follow your instructions to the letter. Who knows, you might even be able to get some Lindens for your trouble? I'll be certain to give you enough for a six-pack of your favorite, myself.

[Joshua Nightshade]

Shockwave, think of it as someone giving you the chance to fix something now before a griefer managed to find your property and take advantage of the misclassified items. It could've been a far larger issue for you.

[Prokofy Neva]

People who evade a ban from their work computer, or a Kinko's or something, are doing the moral equivalent of using an anonymizer. Gleefully coming back in six months to see if their IP ban still "sticks" and evading it, is like being a little grade-schooler on the playground saying "nyah, nyah, you can't catch me," not a mature adult who claims not to be a stalker.

Creepy stalking is creepy stalking, and there's no covering it up.

[Joshua Nightshade]

Suck my cock, cow.

[Prokofy Neva]

>I'm really tired of hearing about residents who shouldn't have to be responsible for their own objects.

I'm really tired of hearing from arrogant tekkies who think they can take bots and invade my property with them. I didn't sign up for bots when I joined Second Life. There is nothing in the TOS enabling them and their intrusions. Nothing whatsoever. If you take the theory that 'anything not banned is allowed' I can think of a lot of other things that 'are not banned" but in fact aren't allowed either -- hey, casino gambling is an obvious one that you can no longer advertise now.

>If you've bought an object, it's up to you to take care of what you own, whether it's on your own land or not. If you've left the checkbox for resale checked... clearly you don't care enough about what you buy to keep an eye on it. And if some normal user just happens to come along and notice that it's for sale and they like it, you get what you deserve if it does get sold.

In just about every single case where I've had someone buy something I had only an original copy of, that somehow got a price tag left on it because of the way it came out of the box, the person who mistakenly bought it returned it. The social contract trumps the bots. People control technology. When technology controls people -- a small group of people hiding behind technology to gain the control they couldn't get by willing consent -- people fight back, and rightly so, and history shows they win.

>Clearly residents need to be more aware about what they purchase and do their due diligence if they truly treasure what they acquire.

Clearly tekkies need to due THEIR due diligence about what is appropriate and non-intrusive with the community when they unleash stuff. This snotty kind of literalism that says "well anything can scrape it therefore I'll scrape it and upload it" is what Mark Barrett used on SLdata.com, claiming that if people are proximate to each other and anyone can see it at will by coming within 96 m2 or whatever, that it's public. It's not public because scraping proximity data and then compiling it with others things like location and time and purchasing patterns is an intrusion. Uploading this to public data bases for the use of aggressive and intrusive marketers goes way beyond the "eye can see" argumentation into spyware. We didn't sign up for tolerance of spyware or bots.

>This search tool is MERELY THAT - a tool. It can be used by both those with or without scruples - though hopefully those *with*. Heck. If you were a user who was really concerned that *oops* one of your items might have been set for sale, perhaps you could use this TOOL to check and make the appropriate changes.

This TOOL is made by TOOLS who didn't have the courtesy or consideration or legality to check with people before intruding. There's no need to have to worry about THE ENTIRE WORLD descending to buy something in my bedroom if there is not bot scraping. Normal people in the normal course of things won't traverse the grid scanning. Only automated bots set into motion by aggressive tekkies with callous cruelty can do this.

These argumentations that Aki makes come from an entirely new and dangerous and toxic mix of medieval techniques and modern technological knowledge. The aggressive tekkie mixes the Spanish Inquisition and the Salem Witch Trials with cyberspace. He scrapes, aggregates, spiders, publicizes and also mutes, bans, excludes, links ban lists, declares people as "trolls". This is really a horrific new mix of old and new culture that really needs to get strangled in its cradle -- big time.

[ringy dingy]

"Opt in" would have been ideal, but let's face it, it wouldn't be as efficient because not enough people would have heard about it to do so. For a search tool to be effective it needs to be all encompassing, so I can understand why they left it "opt out".

[Prokofy Neva]

People always use the excuse of "opt-in" being too slow. And that's why I call it "greed". It *is* greed. But if they truly *are* providing a public service, one they brag is free, then make it serve the public. Get the public involved. Make something fun out of it, like DTV, have people invite Grid Shepherd, befriend him, talk to him, have him answer AI stuff, make people WANT to have him visit their mall and feel a relationship to the project.

By having him stalk everybody's sims silently and scrape their private data, they ensure that people can only have an uneasy or hostile relationship to the effort.

[ringy-poo]

I have to admit, I love seeing Prok rant about "arrogant tekki fucktards".

TEKKI

WIKI

[Joshua Nightshade]

People who ban scrapers from their parcel are doing the moral equivalent of raping babies. Gleefully coming back to point at the scraper is like being a little grade-schooler on the playground saying "nyah, nyah, you can't catch me," not a mature adult who claims not to be hiding anything.

[ringy dingy]

"People always use the excuse of "opt-in" being too slow. And that's why I call it "greed". It *is* greed."- Prokofy

It's not greed. It's being efficient. Are you mad at ESC because they're being efficient? That's really backwards.

[Lordfly Digeridoo]

If google were Opt-In, it would be indexing pages in the hundreds of thousands, not billions.

How useful is that?

[Artemis Fate]

I will admit that they probably should have made them opt in, because ESC should know better how much of a tool the whole world and Prokofy especially can be when they misconstrue something as being an "invasion of privacy". But then they'd have nothing to search for, and all the data was public anyways. Interms of their rights, they had the FULL right to list all this "for sale" items, as much as someone has the full right to read the liscence plates of any cars they see, it's public information.

When you put an object for sale, you are making it PUBLICALLY for sale. You don't put an object for sale that you intend for no one to see or buy, that'd be ridiculous. If you have an object for sale that shouldn't be, you can use this tool to find it and make it no longer for sale.

I really can't see what the big deal is, but just a little forum for Prokofy to make an ill-thought out angry attack on ESC on whatever foot hold is given. As I said, it's curious you jump all over this insulting and thrashing at ESC, but were completely quiet as Anshe Chung did the same thing except worse.

[shockwave yareach]

If Google was entering people's homes and cataloging everything they own, the outcry would be huge. Pretty much what's going on here - I didn't ask anyone to catalog everything I own for me.

And before you say "they only note what is listed for sale...", how can you be so sure? Hm? Perhaps that is all that you can look up on the search page. But is that the only thing stored in their database? Who knows? The only people who know are the Electric Sheep and I don't have any reason to trust them after this underhanded bit.

[Prokofy Neva]

As I've pointed out already repeatedly, Lordfly, including in this article people who put up pages on the Internet are engaging in a set of social constructs, with written and unwritten behaviour codes.

They have a barrier between them and the rest of humanity called "my computer screen" and "the fact that it's all 2-D text and pictures". They normally *want* their stuff to be found either because they are expressing opinions or socializing or selling stuff. They don't mind that their *flat 2-D web page* is being spidered -- it's not their refrigerator and their nightstand that is also being spidered by them engaging in the set of social conventions called "The Internet".

In a virtual world, people make homes on private property. They except those who come to those homes to behave more or less like those in real life, not to be AI bots coming in and grabbing stuff without their knowledge, but to be people respectful of boundaries.

Social constructs and codes matter. Tekkies remain absolutely tone-deaf and oblivious and even hostile deconstructive of them, but that's just youthful folly, ignorance and aggression. If they wish to keep customers, they can't treat people like this.

There is nothing so all-fired important about this debase having 400,000 instead of 40,000 things in it. The only significant use anyone has put it to is to harass yardsalers for selling freebies that content creators should have turned "transfer" off from. (Hey, if people are going to be harangued by Aki to turn off their objects for sale, we can say the exact same thing back to creators who want the entire world to sustain their viral dissemination of freebies and help them enhance their reputation, and squawk when someone legally sells their free, transferrable wares).

A search that enlists cooperation instead of annoyance or even angery is going to be that much more successful down the road. I guess you're forgetting the early days of the Internet, perhaps you're too young. People went to a great deal of effort actually to compile things and send them into the bots at the search engines since they didn't crawl that well or that far in those days. People went to a great deal of trouble to make directory pages you could join voluntarily. I don't see why this step has to be skipped in virtual worlds.

I don't see why we have to mindlessly and aggressively transfer all the lessons and characteristics of Web 1.0 over to Web 2.0.

Here's what Eloise is writing about me, falsely, where I can't respond: "Over on SLH Prokofy is sounding uncharacteristically against making money, but characteristically paranoid that it's all a ploy to exploit him."

I don't see why someone else gets to make money by *exploiting* me and my tenants *personal data* for their *marketing purposes*. The data on my land and my tenants' land is private. In some cases, it's even proprietary. Why do those with the deep pockets, the programmers to pay, and the knowledge, get to exploit everybody? That's not ok. That's not capitalism. That's crime.

There have always been limits on capitalism to keep it from rapaciously even killing its own future customers.

Grid Shepherd is merely the first inkling of the huge scrape that will be going on in virtual worlds, with a really unseemly race to the bottom to see who can be the most aggressive, wily, and cunning in scraping and getting people not to resist. It is definitely not going to be a pretty sight.

[Joshua Nightshade]

You're so completely out of your mind.

SECOND LIFE IS ON THE INTERNET. SECOND LIFE IS, ACCORDING TO PHILIP ET AL, THE 3D INTERNET. IT'S SUPPOSED TO REPLACE WEB BROWSERS. IT'S NOT A WORLD. IT'S NOT A VIRTUAL ENVIRONMENT. IT'S NOT YOUR LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE.

"Grid Shepherd is merely the first inkling of the huge scrape that will be going on in virtual worlds, with a really unseemly race to the bottom to see who can be the most aggressive, wily, and cunning in scraping and getting people not to resist. It is definitely not going to be a pretty sight."

You're damn right it's only the first inkling. Wait what comes in the next few weeks, I've a feeling you're really going to hate it given how many freebies you resell.

[Artemis Fate]

"If Google was entering people's homes and cataloging everything they own, the outcry would be huge. Pretty much what's going on here - I didn't ask anyone to catalog everything I own for me.

And before you say "they only note what is listed for sale...", how can you be so sure? Hm? Perhaps that is all that you can look up on the search page. But is that the only thing stored in their database? Who knows? The only people who know are the Electric Sheep and I don't have any reason to trust them after this underhanded bit."

If Google was going in and cataloguing everything people were trying to sell at yard sales or in home businesses, you're right. there'd be a huge outcry of people that'd be simply estatic for the free advertising.

And who GIVES a shit if they can search everything in my home, I can go to your home right now and search everything in it, you can do the same to me, the sooner people get over the illusion that you have this sort of privacy in SL that you do in RL, the better. What you have out in your house is NOT secret and never has been, and as long as ESC isn't listing these things in their search engines who gives a shit? I could have a listing of everything everyone owns right now, so could you, so could prokofy, so could everyone! BAN THE WORLD! I guess you better isolate yourself in a private sim only you can enter so that no one knows you own a couch.

[Prokofy Neva]

>But then they'd have nothing to search for, and all the data was public anyways. Interms of their rights, they had the FULL right to list all this "for sale" items, as much as someone has the full right to read the liscence plates of any cars they see, it's public information.

It's not, because when we sign the TOS, we don't sign consent to be scraped by bots.

[Prokofy Neva]

ESC is acquiring a bad reputation for being greedy and aggressive, and it's one that corporate clients will want to back away from. They'll get it easier than a pack of juvehile pranksters and script kiddies in the IRC channel will get it.

[Prokofy Neva]

Paging Jerry Paffendorf: if this is the future, you can keep it. No sale.

[shockwave yareach]

Okay Artemis. And when your RL babe finds out you have "Gay, Bejeweled Nazi Bikers of Gor" in your place in Nexus Prime, and she dumps you for it, just remember that you don't give a shit. When a bunch of people materialize in your room to take it from you or see if they can get some quick action from you, just remember that you don't give a shit.

And when a random furry can point at you and laugh about how easily he found something "interesting" about you, just remember that you don't give a shit. :)

huh. Never heard of Nexus Prime. Sounds interesting though.

[Michael Seraph]

So the argument goes:

First Avie: Anshe Chung is evil.
Second Avie: No she's not.
First Avie: She Used Land Scanners!
Second Avie: Prove it.
First Avie: You want proof? She was an escort! There's your proof!"

Can we move on from this? Sometime? Just a little?

I don't want somebody's automated bot going through my stuff any more than I want to pop home and discover Joe Newby and His Online Girl having sex in my bed. I can ban Joe Newby, and I'm glad ACS has done me the favor of banning Grid Shepherd.

[Artemis Fate]

"It's not, because when we sign the TOS, we don't sign consent to be scraped by bots."

However, when you put an object up for sale, you DID consent that people would be able to buy it, and people would be able to see it for sale. The ToS doesn't say anything about banning the use of public information either.

They had the full right to use this information that was open to public as much as I have the full right to write down a liscence plate number, or use your name. If you can't see that, then you really are too far gone.

[Aki Shichiroji]

Prok> I'm not haranging anyone here. I'm not sure where you got that idea. All I'm saying is people who aren't responsible enough to keep an eye on their possessions shouldn't expect sympathy when they neglect to tell the system not to resell it.

I'm also saying that your demonization of this service is a detriment to those same people because ultimately they could have used such a service to catch objects that they'd forgotten.

As for combining 'medieval concepts' with high tech methodology, who's plunging whom into the dark ages here? Come on, let's admit it - SL's existing search tools are CRAP. You are essentially saying that - for the sake of the few who aren't conscientious about what they do or possess in world - everyone else should have to put up with not being able to use a well designed service that allows one to find products and services?

This service has the potential to open up the usability of the platform immensely as far as connecting users with what they want - yet you simply refuse to accept the fact that it is nothing more than your immersive fantasy. Who's being medieval here?

[Artemis Fate]

"Okay Artemis. And when your RL babe finds out you have "Gay, Bejeweled Nazi Bikers of Gor" in your place in Nexus Prime, and she dumps you for it, just remember that you don't give a shit. When a bunch of people materialize in your room to take it from you or see if they can get some quick action from you, just remember that you don't give a shit."

Gay, Bejeweled Nazi Bikers of Gor is a hilarious short story mockery of gorean writing and philosophy that I put up for sale so everyone could read it. I joke about that all the time.

"And when a random furry can point at you and laugh about how easily he found something "interesting" about you, just remember that you don't give a shit. :)"

What're you talking about, the Gay, Bejeweled Nazi Bikers of Gor thing, or the joke "Furry ageplayers of Gor" book I made, that should be for sale somewhere.

"huh. Never heard of Nexus Prime. Sounds interesting though."

It's the original cyberpunk City of SL, you could search that up. It's in the same sim as the welcome area actually, bonifacio and Gibson.

[shockwave yareach]

You've piqued my interest. I'll check the sim out later on tonight. Thanks.

[Cocoanut Koala]

No, to those who think it wouldn’t have worked to tell people about this first. People would have LOVED to be included on this. Store people, like me. Free advertising! What’s not to love?

All they would have had to do is announce it (spend some time and effort announcing it), and people would have signed up in DROVES, and told all their friends about it.

And what’s it for, if not for store people? I mean, the idea is to list the things legitimately for sale in SL, isn’t it? Any way for me to have free listings of my items for sale is a wonderful thing, as far as I’m concerned. The idea that people wouldn’t partake of this voluntarily is kinda hard to believe.

And if they DON’T want to partake of it voluntarily, it’s because they have some good reason. And whatever their good reason, it’s not up to others to decide they are going to partake anyway, whether they want to or not – and then, once the information is published, they get to apply to have it removed.

And while I’m on the subject, I’d like to point out that it is fun to go through this thing and look up everybody whose business you ever might have wanted to know all about, because their entire business is now YOUR business.

You can find out exactly what items they have where, and for what price, including in places you didn’t realize they had stores. You can find out who is partnering with who to showcase each other’s items. You can find out just how prolific people really are, and you can determine exactly what each person has for sale, ANYWHERE.

Along with a lot of information about people who shouldn’t even be on there, but are simply because they bought an item that someone once sold them.

If you really want to be a pain in the butt, ESC has made it so you can teleport RIGHT TO THAT ITEM, sitting there in their bedroom, which they had no intention of selling anyway. Just show up, right in their bedroom there.! Now THAT’S a service.

Coco

[Prokofy Neva]

>Prok> I'm not haranging anyone here. I'm not sure where you got that idea. All I'm saying is people who aren't responsible enough to keep an eye on their possessions shouldn't expect sympathy when they neglect to tell the system not to resell it.

yes, you are haranguing Aki, here and on the Dreamland list. I'm glad Anshe has moved to rule this as a code violation and to block its progress. That wouldn't have been necessary if people could opt-in.

People shouldn't have to "keep an eye on their posessions" on their own private property -- DUH. The problem is that *this thing* is now keeping an eye on their possessions -- and usurping their function. Get it off our lawns.

>I'm also saying that your demonization of this service is a detriment to those same people because ultimately they could have used such a service to catch objects that they'd forgotten.

That's so very tekkie. Create a problem that didn't exist before, by having a new invention discover something that nobody previously needed to be fixed, but now they MUST use this technology to fix it. That is so deeply fucked, I don't know where to begin.

>As for combining 'medieval concepts' with high tech methodology, who's plunging whom into the dark ages here? Come on, let's admit it - SL's existing search tools are CRAP. You are essentially saying that - for the sake of the few who aren't conscientious about what they do or possess in world - everyone else should have to put up with not being able to use a well designed service that allows one to find products and services?

This service merely tells me who left shit out on their lawn for sale by accident. It tells me nothing about the conscious intentions of sellers who could be telling me this by opt-in menus.

SEARCH is not crap. It works great. In combo with traffic, it's a wonder. Most inworld sales occur due to SEARCH, either for places, people, or in classifieds. SEARCH inworld works fine, it's only a problem of the LL data base load. I'd be happy to get rid of other "features" I didn't ask for in order to preserve the capacity of search.

>This service has the potential to open up the usability of the platform immensely as far as connecting users with what they want - yet you simply refuse to accept the fact that it is nothing more than your immersive fantasy. Who's being medieval here?

The world is compelling to the extent that it can be something far more than Geocities or AOL AIM or MySpace. And part of keeping that compelling factor means having a whole lot of healthy respect for people's lives here as they make them. You fail to do that at your peril if you are a business.

[Joshua Nightshade]

Search is crap. You don't know the first thing about websites or databases or even Second Life itself. I marvel that you can manage to sign in.

[Artemis Fate]

You know, google has been mentioned a lot, and it's really a great example. Cause you don't opt in to google, no one asks you if you want your site on google, it just finds it and lists it.

All seach engines do, why should this search engine be different? Why aren't you writing angry letters to Google that your sites are being listed without your consent? Why isn't anyone?

Perhaps, just maybe, it's because you build a site, or put an object up for sale, because you WANT people to see it.

__People who evade a ban from their work computer, or a Kinko's or something, are doing the moral equivalent of using an anonymizer. Gleefully coming back in six months to see if their IP ban still "sticks" and evading it, is like being a little grade-schooler on the playground saying "nyah, nyah, you can't catch me," not a mature adult who claims not to be a stalker.__

Kind of like people who use alts *cough cough* to circumvent SL forums disciplinary *cough cough* action *cough random unsung cough cough*, right Prokofy? *cough*

[Joshua Nightshade]

Now now, everyone knows that having multiple computers is a sign of insidious tekki-wikki. Shame on you for not even posting under a real alias!

But it's moot anyway, as I have stopped reading Prokofy's blog, completely. I don't read or comment on it, and I haven't, for the past year. I have never posted on Prokofy's blog, ever. Completely. At all.

[Joshua Nightshade]

Artemis, Prokofy's real complaint stems from the fact that this tool caught her stealing outrageous amounts of freebies and ripping them off as her own objects. So you have to take all of the other ranting into account.

Beyond other people, I think the griping stems from the fact that they think SL is some real "world" when its own creators have stated they just want it to be the internet. That's why you have vapid fucks like Prokofy who equate griefing in SL to rape of her cats in RL. She has no ability to discern. It's terrifying. She posted a two page dossier online earlier with quotes from Aimee going back years. That's frightening.

For other people, they perhaps don't realize that the Sheep bot is doing nothing beyond what any person could do themselves. ESC could've done a better job by making it clearer what they were doing and how it would impact people, but for those who think SL is a world and not a game or the internet these warnings will fall flat.

And for people like Prokofy who don't live in either RL or SL and instead float in a magical kingdom where everyone is out to get them and only they have the sword of righteousness capable of vanquishing the darkness, well, you're just a fucktard for questioning her.

[Prokofy Neva]

The tool didn't catch me stealing shit. I don't sell things much. I have a little sort of yard-sale in Ravenglass Hall Market in one of the booths, mainly to test the rentomatic there each week to make sure it's working. I put out an Arne chair and a Barnes table. Let's see, that's 2 things.

The counter by Catherine Omega, which I've discussed with her in comments several times before, is in 3 locations I believe, where I have help cards and info on my rentals.

Then I have the flamingos. So I think I have about 6 things out for sale in world lol. I'm happy to have anybody visit it, blog about it, condemn about it, scream about it all they want.

I took myself out of this tool as a protest. But I don't sell stuff, so it doesn't show much anyway. What it showed was all my tenants' stuff, and I didn't like it.

The two-page dossier about Aimee is put up there to validate my claims, which were disputed, that Aimee advertises her heavy drinking, not me.

Joshua might prefer to tackle an easier target, like proving that I have a different drink in my hand each time I'm photographed. I hear there's some real scandalous ones from Podcamp NYC!

Re: Google. Like I said, people don't have sex with Google. They don't perform live music concerts in Google either. It's different.

[Artemis Fate]

"Re: Google. Like I said, people don't have sex with Google. They don't perform live music concerts in Google either. It's different."

Uh...what the hell are you talking about?

People don't have sex with ESC or perform live concerts in ESC either

[Joshua Nightshade]

Far more than six things popped up in that search. And I checked everything by hand, myself, it wasn't mistaken items put on sale by accident. Barnes really appreciated your table sale, I hear. Your tenants' things don't come up with "Prokofy Neva" as owner.

Ofcourse, much as you lied despite screenshots and 15 people seeing you call me a rapist on your site, the fact that once I pointed out to others on the ESC search what you were reselling will be meaningless to Iron Neva.

People don't have sex with Second Life either. On the other hand I really have no idea what you do to your computer.

[Dervish]

Those with giant brains have no heart.

[Prokofy Neva]

I'm happy to put myself back into the Search so readers can see there aren't more than 6 things on sale which were formerly free, including Barnes' table, put at $1500 for a joke. But I don't see any big surge of community concern about this issue, so I won't bother.

My tenants things are 90 percent put on sale by mistake.

I think my few things were mainly consciously put on sale, but I don't sell many thinngs.

I never put anything on my blog claiming Joshua Nightshade was a rapist. I did call him a psychopath however. 15 people recall seeing Joshua's doctored screenshot, not my blog lol.

[Joshua Nightshade]

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.

[Kirpaan]

I don't think that doasiar on Aimee proved anything about problem drinking, but by the looks of it your stalking scared the shit out of the girl. Don't blame her neither. That huge ass message reminded me of when a serial killer puts newspaper clippings of their victim all over their wall. Fucking scary.

[Cocoanut Koala]

Josh knows it was me who compiled that dossier. I told them that on SC.

coco

[Joshua Nightshade]

Kirpaan, didn't it though? It was truly, truly terrifying. That combined with Prokofy's obvious obsession with Aimee and the violent way she's acted out in public... it's just disgusting. Aimee would do well to get a restraining order and would have ample rationale to get one.

[Joshua Nightshade]

Coco, if that were the case why didn't Prokofy correct me?

You're just as sick and obsessed with Aimee, to be sure, but that's not your style.

[kurpaan]

Whoever wrote it, it was bizarre. Like, do you even know the definition of problem drinking? Its not the same as just drinking. Your drinking has to like, cause real life problems. Loss of job, divorce, health problems. The way doctors say it is "continued use despite ongoing negative consequences". All your post showed was that Aimee writes anout drinking, and that you search through her posts like a stalker searches through a victim's garbage.

The reason for my compiling the quotes, Kurpann, was Aimee threating libel suits over, among other things, any comments about her drinking. She has threatened this for months.

But you can't have a libel suit over something you have already attested to in print yourself.

Me "ick and obsessed with Aimee" - that's rich. I'm also a little green frog in real life.

Prokofy doubtless didn't correct