Economics

I have been approached a couple of times recently regarding an “issue” mentioned on the publication known as the “Second Life Herald”, on the subject of a “new copybot”. (I do not read this publication on a regular basis any more, on account of its tedious hagiography of groups of annoying children; an odd pursuit, not my part to judge I suppose but not in my interests to read, either.)

Let us be clear on a few details in this instance.

1. There is nothing at all new about any of this. The idea that with the initial outcry relating to “copybot”, the functions responsible and the use thereof went away, is simply nonsense. The prohibition was a socially-based one, making the possession or use of a copybot illegal, but the technology never disappeared. In fact, as far as I can see, this “copybot 2″ is just a simple modification of the “testclient” that is freely available. Anyone with any interest could make a similar product, we are not talking about Programming Genii here.

2. There are no physical countermeasures - at least, none which will prevent people from copying designs and textures as presented in SL. Anyone attempting to sell you an item which claims to “defend against copybot” is as much a fraudster as anyone duplicating your design and selling it. The entirety of SL depends on the “client” - that is, the thing that is running on your own Engine - receiving information as to what it should display, the exact geometry of every part, the textures, and so on and so on. No, this cannot be encrypted without utterly crippling the already tardy speeds at which SL operates, and being crackable in any case.

3. The only countermeasures, therefore, are social ones. There is the option of relying, instead of on simple product sales, on things which cannot be duplicated - services, customised versions, work on special and personalised products. (This may require some alteration of the expectations of purchasers on the Grid but to be quite frank, those expecting large amounts of time to be devoted to their whims are, at the moment, mostly extraordinary misers.)

   The other part of this is that the Gods of the World, the Blessed Lindens, must actively enforce matters of copyright and duplication, to a far greater degree than they do at the moment.

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What if the latter does not happen? Well, industry will not vanish. Even if copies are easily made and resold, people will still have some loyalty and decency and wish to reward the original creators, particularly at the very low prices charged in general. Little-known designers will be too little-known for anyone to bother copy them; well-known designers will be able to play on their “brands”. Those between are in the most danger I would say, but still, they won’t lose too much in the way of sales.

But they will lose some. The idea of designing things within Second Life, in the knowledge that anyone can copy whatever it is you make and resell it for whatever price they feel like, will put people off bothering in the first place. The prospect of reward spurs people on to create - that is why we have copyright legislation in the first place, to encourage creative activity, with the underlying assumption that creative activity is a good thing for society in general (an assumption with which I would agree).

I would mention here that my own activities, and those of others who concentrate on providing Scripted Amusements, are less at threat, as Scripts currently exist only on the Grid, are not sent to Clients and are thus not Copiable. However, this is merely a coincidence. The issue of Content Duplication is no less important to me merely because it affects my fellows and not myself.

So - what happens if we have a “free-as-in-free-beer” Second Life, enforced by Code? Designing becomes less profitable. Some designers leave. (A number will stay on, certainly, but professionals, apart from the largest who can play on their brands, will be rarer.) The general level of design goes down. There are fewer products available, and fewer to be copied, with the copy-resellers being parasites on the skills of others.

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There is a way around this, and that is as stated previously: the owners of the world, the blessed Laboratory, must enforce rules far more strictly. It is not a perfect solution, as clearly there are far more places than can be checked, but without it nothing will happen. Not just “DMCA” nonsense, which is just a mechanism for covering one’s bottom in the face of future legal action, but actively removing duplicated content.

There are all sorts of ways that this can be made easier - registers of content being uploaded, watermarks and so on - but in the end it is the will that is important, and that means governance, active enforcement of rules. Attack content-thieving accounts; delete them and their alts. Enforce DMCA takedowns properly, as rubbish as they might be.

Without that? Oh well, nothing terribly serious. Content creators will be discouraged from ever entering SL. Nobody will bother to learn the obscure, undocumented, ever-changing details of how the tools work - unless they already have a out-world patron, in which case they will rarely be putting anything on the open grid. Second Life will become less and less interesting. And the “Second Life Protocol” will become less and less relevant, and less and less likely to become the dominant virtual world protocol, and then it will be 2009 and we will all be speaking about SL as certain old-timers do about ActiveWorlds.

You know, nothing that anybody might care about.

I recently rediscovered a Flickr group that I created some time ago for the posting of pictures of the sort of harassing, usually advertising, builds that plague the Mainland and cause all sorts of heated discussion on the Official Forums. Given that I spent a little while writing a Description that supposedly sums up its nature and purpose, I shall simply repost it here:

Griefing builds in Second Life, designed to make neighbours give up and move elsewhere or give up and buy the plot to get rid of the horrible spinning thing. Usually advertising, though not always.

All screenshots should include location (doesn’t have to be exact, as long as somebody could find the plot again) and name of the item’s owner, ideally gained by taking a screenshot that includes the Edit window. This is to provide an undeniable record of the activity, though if it is a series of different pictures of the same piece of ad griefing, only one piece of evidence is required.

(You can use the PrintScreen button in Windows, or Shift+Cmd+4 on a Mac to include parts of the Second Life UI, or some other screenshot program. I use SnapzProX myself, and if you have FRAPS installed, that should work too.)

Due to the nature of the ad/griefing builds posted here, this can’t help but be an 18+ group, even if the actual content on them is at about a 14-year-old level of sophistication.

Lastly - this isn’t a group for just any ugly build. (One could find endless pictures from SL.) It is just for pictures of builds which are clearly being used for unwelcome advertising, to bring down land prices, force people to sell, annoy them enough that they buy the land, or just by cretinous advertising networks who don’t care how much they annoy neighbours. Pretty much anything that is on a 16m2 plot that’s been set for sale is going to fit in, I would think. Oh, and the ads should be long-term ones, not just temporary griefing objects left on somebody else’s land - while those are horrible enough, they don’t have the same motivations.

One can find the group at:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/slgriefbuild/

Please do join and post any horrible examples you wish to! As noted, the naming of names is strongly encouraged - if the owner disagrees that their build constitutes ad griefing or land spam, well, the evidence is there for anyone to inspect, and onlookers can decide for themselves.

I suspect that there might be quite some Drama involved should this become a popular group, but at the least, it will serve some purpose in cataloguing the dizzying variety of different aliases used by these scoundrels. If one sees one of the names mentioned around the Grid, and agrees that their build is indeed a griefing one, do not sell to or deal with that person or their group! And most certainly, do not sell them land, if that was not obvious.

I have been attempting to put together an entry on the recent Banking Regulational Activity from the Lab, but it is a complex issue - not “complex” in the fence-sitting, “on the one hand, on the other hand” way, but complex in that it takes quite a bit of work to say precisely what one means without simplifying economic issues in the way that the Toy Capitalists themselves do. Ad griefers, land spammers, polluters of the visual space, though, there is very little to be said apart from “these are the filthy swine concerned, avoid them at all costs and don’t give them any money”. It is certainly not worth bothering to reason with them, as almost universally they are proud of the fact that they can carry on their “business” safe in the knowledge that they are defended by physical law here, when in the Other World they would have their rubbish torn down in the middle of the night by outraged neighbours at the very least. There is little that one can do at the moment upon the Grid, but what can be done should.

My commentary regarding Banking shall be simply the following cheap piece of graffiti:

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As a further note: a further entry on certain pictures having been Removed can be found here.

I began to write an entry on the following issue yesterday, but quickly found that it was degenerating into a number of personal anecdotes and supposedly-witty commentary when it should have been short and to the… oh stop it! You are doing the same thing again! *pulls self together* This is a New Feature Of The World of which you should be aware and for the fixing of which I suggest that you vote.

The issue is SVC-1125: Inter-sim teleports do not provide a red beacon unless made directly from the main map, so sims without point to point TP are disadvantaged (though there are other similar ones around) and the further description is pretty much, well, that. To sum the matter up, as I see it:

• Teleporting by any mechanism apart from clicking on the World Map to get a red circle and then going there, or by selecting “Show On Map” from a window before using it to teleport, does not provide a red beacon and arrow to the destination any more. This includes landmarks, SLURLs, the use of llMapDestination, secondlife:// links, and the New Search.

• People who teleport into an area which has a Landing Point set will still arrive at that point.

• But they will not have a beacon to their destination.

• Therefore they will not be able to find their destination easily. They would actually have to track it down by comparing the X, Y and Z co-ordinates of the landmark to their current ones, fly around aimlessly in the hope of seeing a sign, ask for directions, or, far more likely, go somewhere else. Experienced and dedicated visitors will likely find a way but even they may simply give up, and the casual browser or visitor will simply pop somewhere else if unable to find the spot that they came to see. (Customers would quite frequently ask how to find my shop with red beacons available.)

• This means that landmarks and SLURLs and so on are now pretty much useless in any region or parcel that has a landing point set. This is actually more places than one might think. Not only does it encompass many islands such as Caledon, Babbage and so on, it also affects such large parcelled establishments as malls and shopping centres upon the Mainland.

• The whole thing is therefore a serious matter for anyone who owns property in a region with a landing point and wishes others to find it - or for that matter wishes to be able to find it themselves.

This matter seems to affect the latest Client (1.18.5) and more recent Candidate Software; previous to that one still has the Beacon Capability, but one must always assume that the most recent release version is being used.

I am sure that this is a mere oversight that can be fixed with a miniscule tweaking of the underlying gears, and everyone can go happily home for tea and crumpets (perhaps to the bakery first, which they will be able to easily find). In the meantime though I would reiterate that it is worthwhile to vote for SVC-1125, to ensure that crumpets are forthcoming within a convenient length of time. That is SVC-1125, by the way.

It seems to me that I have been seeing more and more complaints along the lines of the following in forums recently, regarding errant and sometimes utterly fraudulent land-lords and -ladies - which is when one thinks about it peculiar, as it is not as if the official forums are more used these days, far from it. I recall a time when they were immensely busy but, after the “accident” that befell them (of which we will not speak, and merely nod in mutual agreement and recollection and move forward) they became far less popular. In fact, only those with verified payment details are permitted to use them, which would exclude more of those renting than those having “bought” land.

Now, this is not any sort of criticism of the general practice of land renting of course; given that I rent property in three different Sims, as well as owning a smallish plot, that would be somewhat hypocritical of me. It does, though, occur to me that this may be a result of rapid growth, in three ways.

Firstly, there is the simple fact that one rarely hears praise of a landlordlady but instances of dissatisfaction will be complained about. As the number of residents increases there will be a noticeable increase in the number of complaints but not in the amount of praise (perhaps two threads per year instead of one). I think that the rise is disproportionate even on this basis but it is something to bear in mind.

Secondly, it takes time and experience for a landlordlady to become at all good at their job. Some will obviously never become “good”, as they are crooks (well, they may perhaps be good at being crooks, but that is not really the sense in which I meant the word). But it takes some time to be aware of the market, the behaviour of tenants, the moments when one should show tolerance of mistakes and those when one must recognise them as fraud, that sort of thing. And rapid population expansion, when combined with the suggestion that land rental is a business opportunity and that one can and should take business opportunities within Second Life, will reasonably enough lead to more inexperienced landlordladies, and thus more confusion and dissatisfaction on the part of tenants.

(I am slightly suspicious, personally speaking, that an ideological concentration on individualistic profiteering as opposed to Commerce carried out to the mutual benefit of both parties may also influence the proportion of cheats and fraudsters, but really, I cannot honestly say that I have noticed the proportion of unprincipled and greedy residents increasing, so I will not put that forward as a reason.)

And thirdly, there is the matter of social circles. As I mentioned above, I rent property in three different sims - two sims in Caledon and one in New Babbage - but I am in the fortunate position of knowing the landlords in both cases well, and having in fact been there from the founding of both. My experience of renting is thus atypical; should I have an issue with the way something works I would be able to contact them personally to discuss it, and in fact talk to both regularly on all sorts of matters unconnected to property.

Now, the landowners in both cases are sound and reliable gents who are not the sort to evict someone on a whim or for the profit of a few Lindens anyway - I would not be friends with somebody who was - but even my choice of them as landlords comes from experience and connections. In the case of Caledon, I was not aware of Mr Shang beforehand - well, briefly, during the Tulip Hunt - but he was recommended to me via Professor Jefferson Gould, who clearly had trust in the man. Mr Sprocket, I have known for a considerable length of time.

The ability to pick landlordladies with this sort of proper background information is a privilege of age, to be frank. I am hardly the sort of Social Butterfly who has fingers, or probosces, in all sorts of social pies, or flowers; it is the fact that I grew up upon the Grid in a time when the social circle was considerably smaller that means that I Know People. I could hardly help but do so. I am privileged, I realise this.

The new resident has a lot more difficulty in this area than I ever did. They do not have access to proper information regarding all of the choices of landlordladies that they may encounter. The social circle of Second Life is far wider than before which makes it harder to meet the “right” folk. Furthermore there is no First Land any more, and whilst Mainland prices have been going down to sane levels recently, it was not so long ago that they were utterly ridiculous - these are things which encourage people to seek rental property.

~*~

Where is Ordinal going with this, one might well ask? Well, Ordinal is wondering whether we might not see a renaissance of mainland property ownership. Much as basing opinions on responses on the Forums is unreliable, it must be said that six months ago, everyone was saying “oh no, you want to find a nice landlordlady, don’t buy mainland” and now they are a lot more guarded.

The fact is that one’s property rights are always more secure when buying Mainland vs renting. (I utterly refuse to speak of “buying” from a private landlordlady - this is a legal fiction. Admittedly, Linden Laboratory is letting land to you rather than selling it, but “buying” from a landlordlady is merely being a sublet tenant - covenants mean absolutely nothing in terms of guarantees.) When buying Mainland one must accept the fact that the Lindens may throw one off for some odd reason, though this is almost unheard-of. When renting, one must accept the fact that the Lindens may throw one off, the landlordlady may not pay their tier and thus end up with you being thrown off regardless of how much you have paid them, or that they will throw you off for reasons entirely at their own discretion and without any possibility of you seeking redress, except perhaps if you are willing to launch an action in Court.

There are landowners whom one can recommend, but they tend to be older ones, and only have a limited amount of property to rent. Messrs Shang and Sprocket, as I have mentioned, I have personal experience of; there are others that I know by reputation - for instance, Mr Prokofy Neva, despite having many critics on account of his outspoken opinions, has in my knowledge never been criticised for his practice of the land rental business by even the fiercest opposition, and often praised. I am sure that readers will be able to suggest others.

But how is the New Resident to know? They will not know me, or my peers, or read this poor Journal. Most of the deals that they are offered or find via searching will be by people whom they will not be able to “google”, particularly given the prohibition on “naming names” in the Official Forums and the lack of meaningful third-party ones. To be quite frank, if I became amnesiac I would be very pushed to reliably identify a reliable landlordlady.

The logical course of action would thus be to find some Mainland plot with a reasonable price, ideally in a PG sim (which does reduce the amount of bother in my experience) and take the chance that the next neighbours might be frightfully tasteless boors or sell to a land-cutter. I can see this becoming a more popular option. To be quite frank I welcome it, too - I have a fondness for the Mainland and the way that one must deal with one’s neighbours no matter who they might be rather than live in a gated community, appealing to an Authority. I love the areas in which I live at the moment but it does sometimes make me feel rather detached.

Alas, due to a severe attack of the vapours, I have been unable to complete any Journal Entries recently, and therefore wish to post (for your edification) the thoughts of my semi-estranged semi-clerical brother, Cardinal Malaprop, who sends me letters from the Vatican on unpredictable occasions. At least he claims that they are from the Vatican, though I suspect that he is merely skulking in the Whitechapel backstreets somewhere and occasionally stealing some incense to scent the missives.

Dearest Ordinal,

I have been considering the Nature of that Thing that you term Second Life recently, and have come to some surprising conclusions about its Insufficiency, as have many Luminaries. Whilst the chattering coffee-house types with their portable Aetherial Eye-Phones may laud Second Life as the best thing since the invention of the Bread-Slicing Machine, even to the extent of many Periodicals publishing breathless articles on the subject, I must say that (despite the fact that I have never visited the world and do not ever wish to do so) I have now scientifically proved that it is at heart inferior for any Sensible Purpose, and that anyone Business-Minded should instead be investing in Kittens.

Here are the points of my thesis, numbered for quick and easy reference as I know you are forgetful.

1. Reliability. In contrast to your so-called Grid, which pops up and down like a bat on a bellpull, kittens provide continuous and reliable service for years, at least until they mature as a platform and become cats. Far better than any Lab has proven able to provide!

2. Popularity. The ridiculous claims regarding the number of “Residents” of Second Life have been comprehensively proved false in the literature, and it is well known now that the population of Second Life is in fact you, Mr Warren Ellis and a dozen-odd confused adolescents who were looking for the Penguin Club. In contrast, the number of Kitten Users is vast, I estimate approaching the Thousand Millions.

3. Scalability. A mere forty or so “Residents” may be present in any “sim” at one time in Second Life, I hear, and even then only if they are willing to bear the trial of moving as if they were in a gluepot. Whereas a single Kitten can provide joy to anyone within petting distance, and what is more, any number of kittens may be present at a location at any one time! Why, I have seen baskets of the things, surrounded by cooing children and maids, and at no point did any of them freeze, disappear or have their boots relocate to their behinds.

4. Cost. To “reside” in Second Life requires not only a fee to some dubious Colonial “Laboratory”, but also the expenditure of considerable resources on an Engine able to view it, as well as on one’s Aethernet Communications. Kittens, however, come free, with indeed some low folk even disposing of them at times, and require nothing more than the odd piece of fish for their upkeep. Another point for Kittens I feel!

5. Propriety. Second Life, as the world knows, is a haven for the most appalling perversions and indecencies and outright affronts to nature, whereas Kittens are perhaps the things that most embody the term “Friendly to the Family” yet known to mankind. Would a Man of Business be more ashamed to associate his product with ranting criminal pornographers, or a fluffy bundle of inherent goodness? I think the answer is clear.

Thus, quod erat demonstrandum. I do worry about your continued obsession with this nonsense, dear Sister, and as I know you have thoughts that you are some sort of Scientist, I feel that disassembling what should be clear in any case into unarguable Logical Points may persuade you. Failing that, at the very least my extensive experience of the world of Commerce (as you know I have been Chief Executive Officer of literally dozens of firms!) may influence anyone coming across your public Journal not to waste their shillings on proven claptrap. Kittens, dear fellows, kittens!

Your loving Brother,

Cardinal

P.S. My latest enterprise, a Chap-To-Chap Kitten-Sharing endeavour, is going splendidly, and if you receive any enquiries I would be grateful if you would forward them to me forthwith.

I am not quite sure what to make of this and thus will place it here unedited, but I feel I must mention that the last time I met my brother was when he was up on Weights And Measures charges, for weighing Oranges on an Apple scale.

A couple of events have recently caught my somewhat bloodshot Eye, and from that particular organ made their way slowly along my Nerves and Sinews towards the Fingers, from whence they now emerge in the form of Words. As the First and Briefest Matter, the Electric Sheep have demolished their previous Aethernet Establishment “SL Boutique”, and in its place now stands “shop.onrez.com“. Fear not, previous merchants, as Saleable Items have been automatically shipped across; adding further items, though, I believe will require them to be placed in a Box of the new style.

(At this point I should perhaps declare an interest, in that I have been doing a small quantity of recent work for the Sheep, on an entirely independent matter to this, but I believe that regular readers should really know me well enough to appreciate that I am not given to any sort of promotional puffery. Irregular readers I suppose must simply take my Word on this matter.)

I note with a slightly furrowed brow that previously-included links to my own SLBoutique page and products now do not work, and visitors are simply taken to the ShopOnRez front page. Admittedly it would then be the work of moments for said visitors to then type the name of the desired product into the “Search” box, and hopefully, they will do this, but since “itemid” appears to remain the same between products in Old and New some sort of rewriting rule would seem appropriate.

That small detail aside, something that I do find an encouraging development is the option to use In-World Vendors that are automatically linked to one’s ShopOnRez storeroom - in other words, a free Networked Vendor System that is also an Aethernet Vendor! I must say that this is seems a very wise move for the Encouragement of More Widespread Use. If, dear reader, you will permit me a moment or two of self-indulgence, I shall write a little on my Priorities in the Matter of Stocking. (Not Stockings, for the benefit of that urchin at the back.) On the increasingly infrequent occasion that I actually finish a product to my own satisfaction, my sales priorities are:

1. My Caledon shop; from here, the vast majority of my sales arise. I will make sure that whatever the item might be is boxed up and placed in a Prominent Place with an Appropriately Attractive Appearance. I will likely begin to compose advertisements and a Journal piece about said item once I have done this, and during that process will suddenly realise that I have not placed the items on SLX or SLB.

   “Confound it!” I cry at this stage. “Must I really do this? I can’t stand blasted SLX, I can never get the page I want, and SLB is always broken.” (One must remember that, as stated previously, I am not one of Nature’s merchants and find the entire process a complete pain, thus I am rarely in a positive or sober mood at this point.) Yet I am aware that these efforts are necessary, and, draining my glass, I pour myself another and grimly set to the task.

2. At this point I begin with SLExchange, not because I prefer it - I most certainly do not, I find it ugly and impossible to navigate as a salesperson, though I must say that as a customer it is quite simple to use - but in the knowledge that the majority of my Aethernet sales originate there. I rewrite my advertisement in BBCode (BBCode for heaven’s sake!), click on the wrong links a few times, go back and forth until I remember how to actually put things up for sale, and eventually manage to force the damn thing onto the Site, where it squats, sullenly, not selling.

3. At this stage I am aware that I should also put the thing up on SLBoutique, and quite frequently I do, but also quite frequently I don’t, because I know that not doing so will not be significantly injurious to my livelihood (not that I make much money from SLExchange either to be frank) and after previous activities I am in a Foul and Mulish Mood. This is not, I might add here, the best time to demand that I assist with a Drinks Fridge over Instant Message, unless, perhaps, you are a collector of sarcastic and hostile responses.

Thus, you see, poor old SLBoutique comes last or not at all, through no real fault of its own. However, with the addition of this new Network Vendor Function, there will be the added incentive that populating ShopOnRez will now result in a Network Vendor System being populated as well - and I keep meaning to have one, and have indeed written my own, though suspicion of my own skills leads me not to use it for anything more valuable than notecards. For those folk out there without an established shop of some sort, or with only a very small shop, or with a predeliction for the rental of Vendor Space in sundry other establishments, this would be even more of an attraction to the use of the service. Thus: a good move for all, I believe.

An Addition as of Saturday 28th: Oh, now that I actually come to play with the in-world vendor that is available, it really is a joy to use compared to the absolute trial that configuring such vendor systems in-world usually presents. What is more, moving products from the Old to New style of Box requires just the removal of the existing Box Script and the addition of two new ones. I was not looking forward to having to entirely repopulate a new Box.

~*~

Oh dear, I did mean for that to be the shorter part of this entry, and now it has grown to ridiculous size. Quickly, before I become utterly sick of the idea of writing for another month, I should mention the other point, which was of course the Laboratory’s recent Prohibition on Wagering.

I was gratified to see that as well as actually having the term “wagering” in the title of the Announcement, they also listed Baccarat first in the List of Prohibited Games, Sufficient but not Necessary. Speaking personally I have little love for organised games of chance, given that my everyday Scripting Activities involve the regular possibility of losing large sums of money due to random decisions by Difference Engines anyway, but the fact that I do not particularly like something does not in itself mean that there is anything wrong with it of course; Loofah-Fondling Societies are not my cup of tea either but as long as I am not approached too often by gentlemen bearing said desiccated gourds and inviting me to have a feel, I am not concerned.

I am, and always have been, a harsh critic of those who abuse the Resources of a Sim by emplacing dozens of Campers in front of Colourful Machines, and many careless Mainland Casino Owners are appalling in this regard, but really, even though this will drastically reduce the problem, the solution should not be to ban the activity itself, rather to address the abuse that is causing the issue. The Lag is the problem, rather than the Gambling.

It must be said though that this does remind one that there is a Higher Power than even King Philip. This is no random decree by the Laboratory, who previously have been quite happy with wagering, but a response to the terrible and inscrutable Elder Gods who make decrees affecting unfortunate dwellers in that particular region, based not on what mere humans perceive as Rationality but on Awful Cosmic Whims, the reasoning behind which Man Was Not Meant To Know (and should not delve into, lest one be stricken with madness and end one’s days in the feared asylum that, I believe, is known as Washington). Alas, even the most sparkly codpiece cannot change what approximates to their “minds”.

It might well be said that even sim-hogging graspers deserve a little more notice, let alone those operating innocent establishments on their own sims, but, well, these sudden decisions are a trademark of the Laboratory, and surely we must appreciate their artistic integrity. At least it is good that in this instance, what has been prohibited is fairly clear.

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, as it suddenly arrived without warning on an Easter Monday during which many people are not present, already filled with all sorts of information concerning products.

Automata and Homonculi

I thought that, to start with, I would make up a couple of terms to clarify exactly what was meant here.

• An automaton (”script bot”) exists as an object in-world and uses LSL to move about and sense. It may use outside resources to make decisions and give out information, but its interaction with the Grid will always be on the same basis as any other script. In fact all scripted objects are automata of some level, but most are not very sophisticated, simply opening or closing when touched, say. For example, my trams are automata.

• A homonculus (”client bot”) uses some outside resource to control it, but appears in SL as an avatar; libsecondlife or other open client code has been used to breed this new kind of entity. Potentially it has all of the abilities and senses of a avatar; however, some of them are too hard for it to properly use. The eyes are blind, the fingers feel nothing. Sometimes this is an issue of technology but in many cases it is a matter of cognitive ability. For example, “landbots” are homunculi - they appear to be real people but in fact can only sense land for sale, decide whether it is at an appropriate price, move to it and buy it. They can do this very quickly but they are not amenable to pleas and threats, nor can they look around and decide whether the plot is pleasantly situated and would sell well (except perhaps crudely through certain algorithms, certainly with nothing like the sophistication of an actual person). Homunculi could also use Automata themselves.

• Neither, as will become significant later on, can read.

A Quick Summary of Operations

This form of search, as far as I understand it, operates on the following basis: a search homunculus visits areas, looks for objects lying around, and remembers what they are, what parcel they are on and their price. The exact order in which it does this (does it look for parcels first then search the parcels? does it look for objects then work out where they are?) is mostly unimportant, but there are a few details of it which are important, which I shall mention later on.

Accuracy and Performance

Given that the technical details of the implementation are likely to be changed and improved I will not spend too much time talking about those; if I point to a performance issue, for instance, it will likely be fixed in the next day or two making my commentary worthless. Instead I prefer to talk about issues relating to the basic concept of grabbing the names of items for sale, which is not necessarily unique to this particular system by the ESC either, and may be replicated elsewhere in some different form.

Things which work

It is certainly the case that the engine is able to find things for sale relating to a particular term, though how many of the possible items returned it is impossible to say, and how quickly it will update I do not know. It is also rather fast, though again I do not think that it covers the entire Grid. It does not at this point appear to reliably return results for parcel names containing keywords; I am not sure whether this is by design or some sort of error.

It is clearly an advantage to be able to search for the entire contents of a shop rather than just whatever the owner has managed to squeeze into the parcel description. I, for instance, have a selection of snowball-throwing devices in my shop, which do not have the space to put into search terms for the current Find. Nobody searching for “snowball” would come up with my shop using that, but with this new engine, they would.

It also has a head start on the current methods of Cheating The Search (a practice also euphemistically termed Search Engine Optimisation, but which basically boils down to Camping). This is not a long-term advantage, given that if it grows at all popular, specific methods of Cheating This Search will arise with great speed - “keyword spam”, the practice of putting multiple irrelevant keywords into a search merely to attract searchers, will be far far worse, given that a huge number fake for-sale objects can be created with large quantities of attached text - but for the moment it is refreshing.

One thing that it also does is return items which have a specific person as the creator, not the seller, since it is able to search for both owner and creator. Did I mention that? It is able to do that, so if you wish to see all items set for sale by a particular person you are able to. This is mostly of use to those wishing to hunt down those selling Freebies, a practice which I consider generally unethical but which I do not actually care much about for myself, except in some rare cases. There are those who would be interested in such activities, though, and they will find this function invaluable.

As a side note to the above I have seen the proposition put forward by Mr Neva that this will also allow the harassment of people who are quite legitimately reselling items that were sold for transfer with no indication that they remain free. This is, I would admit, a danger; I am not sure quite how much of a danger, as I do not know how common this sort of behaviour is in the world, but I have certainly heard of it.

Things which item-name-based search will not do

There are however some issues with this which I believe will not help.

Item names are not perfectly descriptive. They often do not relate explicitly to what is actually being sold - if one has a box with several items in it that is set to sell its Contents when bought, it doesn’t really matter what that box is called, though it might make one’s accounting a bit tricky if one has umpteen records of sales for something called “Object”. For many small business people this will not be significant, though.

As well as this, sometimes items may rely on information surrounding them which no bot can read; for instance a dress may be sold in different styles, each containing box with the same name, but each with a different texture applied to show a customer exactly what they are getting. Or, perhaps, the dress is merely sold under its name without the term “dress” - I have several items of clothing like this, where the outfit has a name that means very little, because, after all, anyone actually going to buy it will see precisely what it looks like and what the outfit contains from nearby textures and signs.

This is why I mentioned that bots cannot read, above. They currently do not have the intelligence to interpret context and terrain, and it is likely that it will be years or decades before one is able to “look” at a sign, say, and take information from it which a Human Being could receive in an instant.

In the past, naming sale boxes suitably has not been necessary, because searching has been done strictly on the basis of the name of the parcel. Introducing an extra system which does not incorporate this as well may produce some odd results.

The fatal blow, though - and I am sure that experienced Residents will have picked up on this already and be tapping their feet, wondering when I am going to come to it - is that search by item name is absolutely incapable of incorporating vendors, and an awful lot of people use vendors to sell their products. Personally I use them rarely as I prefer buying from individual boxes myself, but I do, for example, have all my free items in a “vendor”, just one which does not charge.

The result of this is that I believe that performance in practice may produce results biased towards those selling one way and not another for no good reason. There is nothing better about either method, and a system which favours one over the other will be distorted. As I said previously, the fact that the current search means that people put key phrases into parcel names and descriptions may balance this out. Still, I am not sure that this will not be a significant factor, and search engine placement is a very significant thing.

One last point - this works specifically for items for sale, not events or areas. A casino or art gallery would be disadvantaged. Not a huge issue as long as potential users are aware of this.

Ways in which item-name-based search might prove less effective than the current Find

At this stage, by the way, I will not be considering privacy and surveillance implications; they have their own section later on.

As mentioned above the bias towards object/box sales vs vendor sales might be bad, but I am not in possession of sufficient (or any) statistics to prove this one way or the other. There is also the potential issue of people introducing deliberately libelous and/or distorted items to create a bad impression. Some enemy of mine, were I to have any, which I am sure I do not, could take one of my free and modifiable items, turn it into something disgusting and set it for sale as “Ordinal’s Nazi Ageplay Camp Chair - Earn L$$$$$ For Abusing Jewish Babies!!!!!!” which, if sufficiently repeated, would turn up on a search for my name with me as the creator. I would not be terribly happy with such a situation.

There is also the issue that sometimes, items are set for sale when actually they are not meant to be sold, either by mistake or because the original version was set as such. This is surprisingly common and even I have noticed an item set for sale in such circumstances, though a recent post perhaps indicates that it is not an issue any more; I am not sure whether the points mentioned therein refer to this issue but will be testing it when I am able.

I think that the major disadvantage here may come from the unwillingness of people - some of whom are in control of large amounts of land, such as Ms Anshe Chung - to allow the “scraping” of data by the searching homunculi on their own properties. This dramatically reduces the number of potential results. I deal with this in the forthcoming section.

Notification and Privacy

I believe that I have been reasonably balanced, and balancedly reasonable, in my treatment of the issue and the Electric Sheep Company so far; I certainly have no personal issue with any of them; and I have done such things as send bug reports which will hopefully improve the system; thus I hope I will not be taken to be suddenly partisan if I say that I consider the way in which this was announced and “rolled out” to have been handled pretty badly all told.

The announcement of its existence was a fait accompli on a holiday - “hello, we have scanned you and put your details on this web site, oh, you might want to opt out maybe”. I think many people were aware that ESC were working on a search engine for SL but I don’t believe anyone outside of the company had heard anything specific. If they did they didn’t tell anyone.

I can understand that a fully opt-in system would require a considerable level of organisation and bureaucracy, particularly on the mainland with its absentee landlords, probably to be honest an impractical one and one which would definitely mean the project lost a lot of surprise value. For heaven’s sake, though, a week or even a few days of grace prefixed by a message such as “We’ve got an amazing new search engine! It’s great! You’ll get loads more sales! But if you don’t want to be indexed by our bot, here’s your chance to opt out now!” would have been respectful of the well-known fact that people often have objections to this sort of behaviour on the basis of privacy.

At this point I must say that this is nowhere near the level that slstats.com reached, where there was to be quite honest active contempt for objections, and which catalogued considerably more significant data. I don’t believe that ESC have contempt in this instance, please do not misunderstand; I do think it could have been handled better.

It is traditional at this point for some thoughtless hick to pop up and sneer “it’s public data, you put it out there, they don’t have any obligation to tell you what they’re doing, they’re a private company, get over it, you can’t stop it, IT’S ONLY A GAME!” Whilst I am not in the habit of replying to people that I have just made up, even if they are accurate conglomerations of responses I have seen elsewhere, I must make a few points.

The issue of what is “public” data and what is acceptable to happen to it is considerably more complex than a binary “this is private, don’t use it at all” / “this is public, do what you want” one, as is becoming increasingly clear in the Other World with matters such as Closed-Circuit Television Cameras. My appearance, for instance, is clearly public in that anyone may look at me and I don’t mind. Somebody who looks at me consistently for a long period of time, I will find suspicious. The repeated access of “public” information becomes surveillance. The mass access of “public” information can be used for profiling and in concert with other data to produce analyses of behaviour patterns, and not for the benefit of the individuals concerned. And any of this information can be damaging to the individual when it is presented out of context, which, with any mass data gathering escapade, it certainly will be.

It is rational to be concerned about this when it occurs. In fact, I might say that being concerned about it by default is in fact more rational than assuming that it must be okay unless otherwise proven. The “technophobes” here are in fact those who intuitively understand the issues. Information, once gathered, is almost impossible to take back; removing oneself from databases is incredibly difficult unless they are very small ones. Endless legislation goes back and forward on these points in the Other World.

I do not wish to go off on too much of a tangent here, and I am not saying that the ESC are trying to gather data to feed to the New World Order so that they may come and enslave us from helicopters black save for corporate logos. But the mass gathering of information in any way is potentially significant, and if people concerned about that do not feel that their concerns are being addressed they will take action, no matter how much bumpkins say there is no choice and people just need to get over it. A very clear statement about exactly what is gathered, what is stored and what it is used for needs to be put forward, with some advance warning, or else there will be mistrust, resulting in, say, the system being banned from several dozen sims at once.

Merely gathering data regarding items for sale may not in itself seem threatening, given that items are generally put out for sale to the general public. There are though I’m sure people who would actually rather they were not publicly listed, who don’t advertise in the traditional way. Perhaps they want to sell to a specific person, or to a select crowd. Perhaps they don’t want the details to go into a database to be aggregated and used to produce market strategy presentations. Perhaps the idea of being entered against their will into somebody’s catalogue with whom they may disagree makes them feel icky. Perhaps they are insane. Who knows? Does it matter? This enterprise doesn’t bother me terribly and I am not going to be banning any bots for the foreseeable future, but if others wish to I cannot say that their wishes should be ignored. The choice and appropriate information needs to be presented from before Day One.

Other commentary

• 3PointD
• Barney Boomslang
• Second Life Herald
• Second Thoughts
• Second Life Insider
• Clickable Culture
• Lordfly Digeridoo
• Second Life Tribune
• Forseti Svarog

I am indebted to a Concerned Reader, who has left a comment on a previous post regarding an automated method of searching for and purchasing land requested via the libsecondlife project Consultancy page.

land troller
• A method for using libSL for trolling Land sales. (first land and others) *** — $300
• You have a coder, but I need some more details that you can either post here or e-mail to ###. Do you want an automated method of purchasing land in SL, or do you want a system that alerts you when it finds land that meets certain criteria?
• What you want a spec?? haha …. first req would be a system that alerts when land available meets certain criteria…..if it could then automate certain purchases that would be great too. To be clear…I do not intend to use ALT avatars to cheat on first land. I currently do not own land, but am always getting beaten out by land scammers…..so I would also like to beat them at their own game and offer a FAIR price to n00bs after explain the reality of the land system.
• I will complete the first requirement and we can talk from there

Well, it is all very well saying that one has only the best of intentions, but a few matters do arise:

1. I tend not to be in the habit of believing random folk on the Aethernet merely because they say they may be trusted, personally speaking, no offence meant to Mr or Ms ***;
2. Once the tool is out there who can say who will then use it?
3. Nothing is said of not using it for conventional land sales, including everybody’s favourite activity, land swooping.

Heaven knows that I am not one to stand in the way of progress, and I have a decidedly neutral attitude to the notorious libsecondlife project. Automated land purchasement is however something that fills me with dread. We have enough of an issue with ridiculous prices arising for Mainland plots at the present time, aided as far as I am aware only by humanly assiduous greed. Inhumanly assiduous greed, well. Even in the Other World, there have had to be automatic systems created to counter the possible effects of automated stock trading and prevent immensely rapid rises and falls.

There is always some talk in these instances of respecting “the laws of the market”. This always brings to mind someone falling off a cliff being told not open a parachute lest it disrespect the law of gravity. It may indeed be the case that some sort of “market level” is reached, but there is no reason that that will at all be the best level for society, and in fact there is no guarantee that a stable level will ever be reached; a constant cycle of boom and bust is perfectly consistent both with theory and practice. This sort of thing is all very well for speculators, but even on the Grid land does actually have meaning to actual people outside of its value to land dealers. Even if it is not absolutely required for existence, it can be argued that it is necessary for a certain quality of existence; not only for builders but also for anyone who simply wishes an area in which to relax with a scripted brandy, tell tall tales to one’s friends and potential conquests and perhaps even compose a romantic Ode over Instantaneous Message.

Enough of my Socialist ramblings I suppose; that is an initial reaction, but I would wish to raise the tone of this Journal somewhat by penning a more detailed piece on what automated land trading may mean for the Grid, which I aim to do forthwith. Being subject to a Virus in the Other World - yes, they exist even there, though the term is of course a metaphor, I am not really suffering from the effects of self-replicating Engine instructions - I expect that I will have some spare time for this undertaking.

Oh, I must just add one observation - this is absolutely and precisely not the sort of thing that the libsecondlife project should be engaging in if they have any concern as to public perception of their endeavours. I have spoken at length about the fact that CopyBot now epitomises their output, and from those that I have spoken to, I believe that this is accepted as a situation that was Not Necessarily Handled As Well As It Could Have Been. libsecondlife as the originator of both CopyBot and LandSwoopBot… well, if anything is going to have the inventors’ castle burned to the ground, it would be that, and one can argue until one is blue in the face that such things would have happened anyway and nothing is safe on the Aethernet blah blah blah but it won’t make a bit of difference if you are identified as the group who did it first.

~*~

In entirely unrelated news I am currently being bombarded with Erroneous Instantaneous Messages informing me of things I have no interest in, mostly that objects cannot be created in regions in which I am not attempting to create objects and care not one whit about, and thus I am very unlikely to receive any Offline IM sent, as such things are capped at a certain level. Please, if you wish to communicate, write in a notecard and send that to me.

I have been left somewhat drained of inspiration in Second Life recently by continual catastrophe and general malaise, and I have been thinking of alternative Models for Industry, as I am of course in constant need of funds, as are we all. Caledon is not free, you know.

Despite my general antipathy towards the production of custom builds, I was thinking that I might offer a service whereby a customer would suggest a specific model of firearm, and I would endeavour to create a replica. I have stated before that I find such things quite relaxing, though it can be quite a bit of work. I would wish to be able to sell the finished product to other customers afterwards, unless a great deal of money was forthcoming, but on the other hand, the purchaser would be able to say “it was I who gave Ordinal the idea for this device, it is special to me” - and they would receive a personally customised version which was not for general sale.

I would be obliged if any readers with Opinions would comment on the matter, and particularly as concerns the matter of price. I would be charging more than the standard for such a service, perhaps twice the subsequent sale price, or more for something that might not sell? It would depend on the difficulty of the thing.

Incidentally, yes, I have noticed the possibility of Restrictions regarding Scripting for certain Members of Society that have been proposed, and whilst I have been commenting on the matter on certain Aethernet Forums I consider that it would be somewhat premature to make a definitive statement, seeing as how the announcement was of such a speculative nature. Idle speculation is the Devil’s Playground. If firmer proposals are made I will certainly be making my feelings known. Incidentally it is interesting to see that the Linden “Blog” is at First Place in the rankings of its current publisher, wordpress.com. Apparently there are many curious residents out there demanding immediate information, and good luck to them, say I!

Ah, one other thing that I have been doing recently with regards to Commercial Affairs is the setting of my sold products to “transfer” rather than “copy” (where appropriate - vehicles, for instance, must be copy, given the extraordinary number of accidents which can befall them).

One practical result of this is that people may now visit Ordinal Enterprises, see items which they are not that interested in themselves but think would be absolutely perfect for someone else, and purchase them as gifts without having to bother me about it. But I am also interested in the idea that, once bored, someone would then be able to resell or pass on the item concerned.

If anyone would prefer copy versions they should simply say so, return the original item and I will be delighted to pass them one entirely free of charge - another benefit of transfer items, since if someone buys a copy item and wishes a transferrable version, I have no guarantee that they have removed the item from their inventory and that this is not some sort of “I would like a free thing for my friend please” tomfoolery.

I am of course open to debate on this point. One drawback of no-copy transfer products is that if one wishes to provide a new version, one cannot simply drop the updated one upon the customer without effectively giving them a new one for nothing. I rarely update products, though, I must say.

This Journal rarely comments on Matters of State in Second Life - the potential effects of the latest proclamation of King Philip, for instance, or the issues of the economy caused by the moving of stipends to Thursdays and making them payable only in cucumbers.

I would not like anyone to think that this is because I have no interest in such things, or am unable to comment upon them. Such topics are, though, absolutely nothing to do with why I continue to write. Should anyone ask my opinion I would be delighted to bore them to tears with my theories and predictions, but I do not, in truth, wish to do that here.

I prefer to concentrate on more important matters, such as

1. Why are my trams being returned to me on such a regular basis upon passing through a tiny pocket of Caledon that approaches its Prim Limits? It used to be the case that there was a period of grace that meant that such things did not happen. This is a serious affair.

2. Why does it appear that, upon logging in, an attachment can request permissions and apparently receive them, but actually not gain PERMISSION_TAKE_CONTROLS? Oh, it claims that such permissions have been given, but there is no response to the control() event, and the quaint blue buttons labeled “Release Keys” and “Mouselook” do not appear. This used to happen but now does not. Other permissions, such as PERMISSION_TRIGGER_ANIMATION, seem to work perfectly well.

I attempted to recapture my “zing” by constructing yet another replica firearm over the weekend, this time a Chinese copy of the Mauser C96 called the .45 Shansi - a powerful machine pistol with textures, sounds, and three different modes of operation including “pistol whip” (considering the original was sturdy enough to be used as a club in the trenches). As I have mentioned before, the discipline involved in the reconstruction of an already-existing object sometimes stirs me to life. In this case, though, it did not, and it has only been building a launcher of cylinders full of killer bees that has brought me to anything resembling enthusiasm, I fear.