Auto-Bans For Copybot Clients - SL Viewer Wars Escalate

Skills Hak's client detection system & ban relay fights copybot-capable clients - Transylvania vampires warn against running griefer clients

by Pixeleen Mistral, National Affairs Desk

Taking Second Life anti-copying software as a service in a new direction, Skills Hak has released a client detection and ban relay system which Hak says "detects all known viewers with copybot/griefing functionality" with no false positives. Hak goes on to claim "So far there hasn't been a single reported false positive. You can trust the system, the technique is not something that can be wrong, it detects harmful viewers with a success rate over 80%".

 

Only L$700 to fight copybots on your land - for the first month

It is unclear from the sales literature at XStreet exactly how one might contest a ban by the system other than to appeal directly to Skills Hak, but Hak apparently is willing to discuss matters with those who feel slighted by his system. This certainly seems like an infinitely scalable approach to justice in the metaverse, assuming Hak prefers to spend his time in Second Life chatting with aggrieved griefers and copybot artists.

The system is currently being sold on XStreet where it currently ranks #10 in sales after reaching a peak rank of #4.

The Gemini Cybernetics CDS system has apparently sucessfully automated the compilation and sharing of banned Second Life residents among Hak's customer base. Accord to the XStreet ad, "In the first 3 beta weeks, the system detected over 1200 people with harmful clients in the few high-traffic test-regions."

Two obvious extensions to the product - automated estate bans and automated abuse reports are a planned for a future release. 

"As soon as an avatar connects to your region information is being requested from a team of bots with special abilities, connected to a database server off-sim. If detected and identified as harmful, the avatar is being teleported home and banned from the parcel automatically. (Estatebans and automated Abuse Reports are a planned feature..) Avatars will stay in the database forever and treated as potentially harmful, even after returning to a harmless viewer. It is a networked system so banlists are shared automatically and users can benefit from each other. All the heavy-lifting and calculations are processed outside of the grid leaving CDS lag-free and secure.

Will this sort of zero tolerance justice improve life in the metaverse? Will the security of Skills Hak's ban database prove to be better than Banlink? The leadership in the Transylvania sims apparently think so, and have warned their community against using questionable Second Life viewers:

Group Notice From: Willow Raven

Be warned:  If you are using a Neillife or other viewer designed for copybotting and enter Transylvania, Hercynia or Desolation, your avatar will automatically be ejected and banned, not only from Trans but from every SIM in SL that is equipped with the protector.  This copybot protection service does not affect Emerald viewers, only illegal third party viewers that were designed for the express purpose of copybotting.Do NOT risk your status with the family  by wearing such a viewer.
Transylvanian Royals

Comments

[VerNie]

this is a pure fake. i can prove it. this guy sells that insiltico robot that gemini thingy. i bought one last november of 2009. when im wearing the robot suit/gear, it messes up with your viewer. only those who are using emerald can see it. my friend told me "why you using a cryo viewer?" i replied -nope i dont use cryo dude only sl standard one, i dont even have emerald. then he said " dude your tag is flashing your using cryo, oh! wait it says now your using gemini, oh wait whats that?" he keeps saying this & i was just in the dark as he was & confused as ever. then we started to argue - more friends came and 3 of them saw same thing - but i insist no way not even posible im using those. then i took off that robot thing -- my viewer went back to normal. i was shocked that its even posible to manipulate ones viewer. same reaction with my friends. imagine those who got who go wrongly reported for using a illegal one. then i sent a AR with screenshots and chat logs but no reply after that. i sent a notecard to that guy the creator. he accepted the notecard but never explain or anything. so this detection thingy - might be just manipulation that script he used before on his robot. THIS IS JUST PLAIN WRONG. (SORRY MY ENGLISH IS BAD I HOPE YOU GET MY POINT SOMEHOW)

[Jahar Aabye]

Senban, please understand that I was simply stating that I did not think that this was a case of discrimination. I think of it more as a case of stupidity (granted, discrimination *is* a form of stupidity, but that's another story entirely).

In the end, communication between content creators (and communication from customers) who send in snapshots with the inspect window included, stuff like that, where DMCAs can be filed and the systems that are already in place and transparent, that's the best way to handle these things. I know that the Herald has had a recent bad experience with DMCAs, but on the other hand, the DMCA process also allowed for a proper process for the Herald to get their stuff re-published. This is because things like the DMCA are spelled out in clearly written format with transparency and clearly defined actions that can be taken, with courts of law as the ultimate arbiter.

It's funny, I see people on that XStreet discussion page talk about how this system has already banned such and such number of people from their land (who they assume were using copybot viewers to copybot their stuff). On the other hand, they never actually were able to "stop" any content theft. On the other hand, when content creators or their loyal customers spot copybotted material and send evidence to the legitimate creator, it allows us to actually go after the copybotters. We can file DMCAs against the people using the copybotted material and against the copybotter. We can get the material removed from SL, and if necessary institute legal action against any large-scale copybotting operation (although we generally tend to see dumbass underage morons copybotting stuff because they can't steal their parents' credit card to buy the L$ to get the product in the first place...but then again, we have an RL business license and our stuff is fairly well-known, so you pretty much have to be a zitfaced moron teenager to think it was a smart idea to go copybotting it).

Content creators who want to make money need to ignore the copybot mass hysteria, and focus on creating new products, updating the ones they already have, being proactive in hyping their products and getting their customers to join their official groups, where they can then send out group notices about new releases, etc.

People who focus more on stopping copybots than on proper marketing (and of course, making good products) are simply not fit to be running a business. Sure, if you see your stuff copybotted, report it. If you think you see someone else's stuff copybotted, take a snapshot with the inspect window included, and send the creator.

But this goes beyond stupidity and into just poor business strategy. Welcome your customers with open arms (or in our case, loaded arms), make them feel like family, make your products as good as they can be, put out new products and update older ones regularly (and I'm guilty of not updating some of my stuff as fast as I should due to health problems). That's good business. That's the difference between being in business year after year, and being just another name people remember and wonder what happened to them...

[Gundel Gaukelei]

@Nelson Jenkins
"In fact, I DO have phone-home scripts in my products. They even have a variety of functions limited solely to me so I can delete things remotely or on-site, reset scripts, and request debugging reports of the scripts inside. They also check a database of known copybot users (and, admittedly, people that I despise) and even can be restricted from being used in sims that are copybot hubs. If something's wrong, it immediately deletes/unwears itself. However, here's a simple way to defeat it: no-script land. Rez or wear it in no-script land and nothing happens whatsoever; you're free to fire up your copybot."

That's exactly where you end up proceeding on that path: treating your customers as potential criminals - every single one of them. Wire tapping on them, invade their privacy in any possible way, fraudulently sell them products which lack certain properties but got others that are unexpected and unwanted by the customer and even steal stuff from them they paid you for. This all happened before - the music industry and others have gone through all of this BS. But in the end they pissed off former legitimate customers like me who just wanted to listen to that damn CD in their car audio - which didn't work - or were stealing my time and made me angry because I don't want to be confronted with lengthy "you copyright violators will end up in jail soon" ads preceding every single DVD I bought or rented because I'm not a criminal and I utterly refuse to tolerate dealing with me in such a way.

I wouldn't be too surprised if your legitimate customers would start looking into copyright infringing techniques for the sole purpose of using the stuff they paid for without all the fascist surveillance crap you've been kindly packing in there. To my eyes, a fully justified decision.

Now, when I want to buy something (which I did in the past, look me up in secret Wiki, lol) or just hang out in Insilico, its under the risk of ending up as a false positive in someones DB forever – while the real copybot users would just get another alt and proceed their doing – viewer patches applied.

The first thing I do now is, delete anything I bought from Gemini in my inventory. Who knows what spyware is hidden in those scripts.

Maybe its about time to start a a database of places where collateral damage is considered a necessary evil.... no, !rly.

[Senban Babii]

@Gundel Gaukelei

"That's exactly where you end up proceeding on that path: treating your customers as potential criminals - every single one of them. Wire tapping on them, invade their privacy in any possible way, fraudulently sell them products which lack certain properties but got others that are unexpected and unwanted by the customer and even steal stuff from them they paid you for."

This is exactly why I don't support all these rants by content creators. They don't all do it I know but there are increasing numbers of them who treat their customers as criminals by default.

I simply don't buy anything any more. I've gone from spending a considerable amount weekly to pennies monthly and if you take that and multiply it, content creators will be out of business soon unless they start treating their customers with a damn sight more respect. Personally I'd rather learn to simply create my own content and give copies away to people if they like something I created. It's more fun, it's more interesting than being someone else's cash cow and it's more in the spirit of Second Life (or rather how it used to be).

The sooner SL has some kind of consumer association to protect us from unscrupulous business owners and content creators, the better. I'm not holding my breath though.

[Jahar Aabye]

@ Gundel,

(warning: the following is TL;DNR and contains a lot of useless pedantic info on scripting...I blame my meds)

Most scripted products in SL have some form of "phone home" script in them...if for no other reason than to allow for the products to automatically update. Sometimes a creator needs to update a product to fix a serious bug, or other times simply to add extra functions (for example in our case, adding compatibility with new combat meters). It's far easier to do this by having the device check for updates when worn than to use some sort of mass update list and send out updated copies to everyone all at once.

In fact, I generally would not purchase a scripted object of any sort in SL unless it was copyable and came with automatic updates, simply due to the shaky nature of LSL scripting. Simulator/VM/Database/Asset errors can cause scripts to malfunction, sometimes permanently. Also, no code is ever 100% perfect, no matter how much beta-testing you perform, so there is often a need to send out an update to fix some minor bug that made it through beta testing.

I'll give you a minor example that my boss probably won't mind me sharing. When I updated our MP7s (mostly a recompile to LSL and efficiency changes, but also a few new features), I accidentally used my code for the prim light and laser for the "normal" sized gun copy in the "large" sized copy as well. After all, the two models (which are sold together) are identical except for the anims, right? Except that the light and laser use prim-move...ooops. The embarassing result was that if you wore the "large" version of the guns (intended for SL oversized avatars), and turned the light on, it looked silly and the beam didn't even appear to come from the flashlight at all. It was a quick fix, fortunately. And so people who had received the automatic update to v1.2, or people who had just recently purchased the gun after the update was released (since some of the new functionality was very popular) were automatically given an update to v1.2.1 upon wearing the gun, with the light issue fixed.

So my point is that a "phone home" feature is not, in and of itself, a bad thing. Virtually all scripted objects in SL use it to allow for updating, because unlike Skills Hak, we recognize that no scripted system can ever be 100% perfect (and also because we like giving our customers new features to play around with). It's not necessarily "fascist surveillance" crap. Just "am I the latest model? No? Then please send my owner the latest model."

Also, most content creators do keep records of purchases, not necessarily for nefarious purposes, but simply because SL screws up sometimes, so you get people who buy a product from a vendor and it doesn't get delivered. I don't do customer service, so I can't speak as to how records are checked and verified, but the basic idea is that if someone doesn't receive their product, there needs to be a way to verify the purchase and then manually send them the product if necessary.

Just because people like Skills and Kalel keep secret databases doesn't meant that every merchant who has their products "phone home" or who keep sales records are nefarious or are collecting any personal info or treating their customers like criminals. Hell, you do realize that XStreet sends you an email when someone purchases one of your products, right, even if you're not the merchant but are receiving a cut of the profits? And those of us with reasonable levels of intelligence recognize that we would never reveal that information to anyone outside the company. Even something as simple as a product purchase is private information between the buyer and seller.

The difference is, there is an expectation that when you purchase a product from someone, you enter into a business relationship with them, you expect to receive the product and you expect that it will work and that bugs will be fixed in a timely manner. There's some level of choice involved. What Skills is doing does not have that same level of consensual relationship between the people his system has been checking (70,000 residents, by one tally, of whom something like 1,700 were flagged as using illegal viewers, and who knows how many of those were false positives). People who purchase Skills products might be voluntarily entering into some sort of relationship or agreement with him, but those who were scanned by this system were not.

Now, if all his system was doing was something as simple as the cryo-detection method, for example having a bot send an IM to someone to check for the stop_typing response or some such, then maybe it's no worse than someone using a sim-scanning radar (although using a megaprim with llVolumeDetect() is just stupid)...but if Skills was actively scanning people's PCs, as he claimed in one SLU post (possibly looking for the specific XML files used by illegal viewers), then that's clearly crossing the line. When I enter a sim, I recognize that my presence in that sim might be detected by a scripted object, that I might be seen by people within draw distance, that my SL client is broadcasting my UUID and location to the entire simulator (has to, else how would I end up on the minimap?).

But nobody consents to having their computer scanned by the sim owner or by some private company that refuses to release even the slightest details of their methods, and boldly asserts that there can be no false positives. Nobody consents to being placed on a blacklist that may cover a large swath of regions and for whom the current sole appellate authority is Skills herself.

See, a land owner has the right to ban any individual they choose...but when they rely on someone like Skills to essentially tell them (or actually force them) to ban all of the individuals on the blacklist, regardless of what client they might be using at the moment...well that places a much bigger liability on Skills herself. Skills is now responsible for banning people from any region that uses this utility. Sure, Skills can try to fob it off and say it's the fault of the people who used that client, or that the land owners knew that the system would automatically ban people, but it is still the system scripted and programmed by Skills that is doing the banning, and even if land-owners choose to give him that level of control over their banlists, the other residents who have been scanned by his device did not consent to be scanned in any way, shape, or form, and did not enter into any sort of business relationship with Skills.

That's the difference between scripted objects with harmless "phone home" scripts or keeping purchase records, which involves servicing customers who enter into a business relationship and expect (and deserve) to receive their products and support for their products on the one hand; and covertly scanning thousands of avatars and keeping some of their names in a secret database without their consent, a database that automatically gets added to the banlist on the land of anyone using the system.

The problem lies not with ethical businesspeople who keep purchase records or have their items phone home for an update, it's the people who forget that basic business ethics apply to SL as well as RL, and install these scanners without any informed consent. You will notice that in RL, if you walk into a store, there will often be some sort of sign noting that there are security cameras present, for example, or there may be prominent detectors at the door that will set off security alarms if someone walks out with an item that still has a special tag on it. Granted, these things are more to discourage dumbass kids than to deter serious thieves, but the basic concept of informed consent is still there, and it's missing with this system.

Perhaps Skills should make sure that everyone who enters one of these regions is informed that the region is protected by his system, not just the people who are ejected for using illegal viewers...and make it tell them at the time that they would be scanned, not telling them some time later.

The whole thing reeks, and I hate that it now makes legitimate, ethical businesses that use basic customer service techniques look like they're doing anything remotely similar to this sort of massive intrusion of privacy. I have always maintained that the best way to do business in SL is to do good business, to cultivate a loyal customer base, make good products, market them well, etc. Go after copybotters when you find them, but Skills system is just not good business practice because...UNLIKE the phone home scripts...it treats everyone as a potential criminal until they have been scanned. I have already had to tell one creator whose products I have purchased in the past, and to whom I have given scripting advice and whose products I have recommended to friends, that I will no longer be patronizing his store specifically because he uses this system and was active in allowing it to be used in his store during the undisclosed testing period.

[Wordfromthe Wise]

can i haz a List ? lol

There is currently an SQL database being assembled with the names of users who are using these clients and apparently many of them have been banned . Here is a link to the name list , just to show that its out there :

http://209.85.229.132/search?q=cache:2tOCP9mcwU4J:pastebin.com/pastebin.php%3Fdl%3Dd4ac68943+insilico+copybot&cd=8&hl+en&ct=clnk&gl=uk&client=firefox-a

[Tux Winkler]

This works then! I thought it ejected and banned users from the sim then notified the other sims using the device? How is it that Chanel Blokke can repeatedly visit sims? IDK if the log is real, but it is highly funny! If it is real then surely this is proof it doesn't work on the identifiable viewers (of course it cannot detect a spoofed client!)

I would hope the ban is from the sim, because LL shouldn't ban for using a viewer (unless it contains the word life in it it would seem - thats another story though).

12:55:29 Neillife User detected in Luck Inc: Chanel Blokke
12:58:53 Neillife User detected in Luck Inc: Chanel Blokke
13:35:28 Neillife User detected in Luck Inc: Chanel Blokke
14:17:16 Neillife User detected in Luck Inc: Chanel Blokke
14:36:34 Neillife User detected in Luck Inc: Chanel Blokke
19:34:13 Neillife User detected in Magika Land: Chanel Blokke
23:15:09 Neillife User detected in Magika Land: Chanel Blokke
01:26:25 Neillife User detected in Luck Inc: Chanel Blokke
02:03:37 Neillife User detected in Luck Inc: Chanel Blokke
02:03:39 Neillife User detected in Luck Inc: Chanel Blokke
04:42:30 Neillife User detected in Magika Land: Chanel Blokke
04:42:36 Neillife User detected in Magika Land: Chanel Blokke
06:22:22 Neillife User detected in INSILICO: Chanel Blokke
06:22:29 Neillife User detected in INSILICO: Chanel Blokke

[WTF?]

@Nelson

"In fact, I DO have phone-home scripts in my products. They even have a variety of functions limited solely to me so I can delete things remotely or on-site, reset scripts, "
Can I have the name of your store so that I know not to shop there? A script that you can use to remotely delete items bought from you? What kind of business are you running? If i buy something from a store, it is mine, you have no business coming around after the fact deleting something that was bought from you. How about a system that detects dishonest business people like Nelson so we know not to buy from him. Deletes objects after you sell them, what a moron. This reminds me of Black ops weapons threatening to disable weapons bought from them if someone reports a person using their weapons for griefing. At least Black ops informs their customers of this so that a person knows to go do business else where and not risk someone getting in a hissy fit for losing in combat and having their weapons taken away or disabled because some sore loser decided to report them.

[Anonymous]

Well now thank you guys! You've just completely eroded any confidence I had left in Linden, Second Life, or the users of Second Life.

I just took a look at my hair, shoes, and bracelet only to find that each has at least one script per prim for fuck knows what reason, and my hair has something in it called "phone-home". I have no idea what these scripts do, some may be innocent and for all I know that "phone-home" thing is pinging some off-world database and relaying my fucking chat.

My account is set to delete next month and I'm not coming back until all you sickos who think its okay to spy and collect shit on me are fucking gone!

[Jahar Aabye]

@WTF,

Perhaps you should actually know what you're typing about before you speak about specific companies. We have, to date, had to disable ONE user's gun that I know of due to massive griefing that was bad enough that the land owner had to contact Grey personally. That would have had to have been some time in 2006 or so, incidentally. We've disabled a few others that were obtained through fraudulent means, but that's it. Out of thousands sold. Nobody has every had their weapon taken away or disabled because of a sore loser reporting them for beating them in combat...especially considering how many people have had their asses kicked by people using our guns. So kindly shut the fuck up about things you know nothing about, and stop defaming a company that actually creates content and engages in ethical business practices.

Like I said, almost every single scripted item in SL uses a "phone home" script to check for updates. If we didn't do that, we would not be able to keep our products compatible with the up-to-date 3rd party APIs that we use (like the CCS roleplaying system) or add new features or fix bugs, and the same is true for most other scripted content in SL. If one of our products breaks or isn't working correctly, we fix it, period. If you legitimately purchase one of our weapons, you will receive it, it will not be de-activated. The only real situation I could foresee where that might happen would be if we find that there's some massive bug in the product where it could crash a sim or something, then yeah, we'd probably issue an immediate automatic update for everyone and de-activate the older versions. That's never happened, thank G_d, but I'm just pointing out a hypothetical situation that any content creator has to consider.

So like I said, be careful how you describe events you don't know jack shit about, because it's insulting and defaming to a large group of people who put a lot of hard work into creating content, and we don't de-activate that content illegitimately.

And even if that were to happen, unlike Skills, we have a large team of customer service reps who will gladly look into the situation and try to resolve it. We don't make money if people can't use our products, we make money when people use our products, love them, and come back and purchase more.

[Bonnie]

Amazing that we can even move at all in SL with all these phone home, deactivate/delete (aka stealing scripts), update,and every other script running in a sim using up the resources. It is not a surprise that LL has decided to limit script usage.

Personally I think it is up to Linden labs to delete or punish a griefer and not a business owner doing what would be like a thief crawling in a persons window at night and stealing a product from their customers.

[Nelson Jenkins]

@ Gundel Gaukelei

"That's exactly where you end up proceeding on that path: treating your customers as potential criminals - every single one of them. Wire tapping on them, invade their privacy in any possible way, fraudulently sell them products which lack certain properties but got others that are unexpected and unwanted by the customer and even steal stuff from them they paid you for."

Well, on my personal blog (part of the company website) I posted the details to this system and actually have offered it to a personal friend of mine, who has willingly adopted it to fit his own products using his own database and has had no complaints so far. I've notified the group and the news stream twice about its release (a few months ago). I have only used the backdoor delete function once, on a friend's fire alarm system that couldn't be shut off because he was out of town and the local fire department did not set up their access list yet. My original intention was to be able to remotely or locally reset any or all scripts within the product, but then after considering the self-delete function, I decided to throw it in just in case I needed it (and, obviously, I have).

If you're talking about the blacklist part, however, it doesn't affect you, so what do you care? There's no more than 100 names on the list (many of which are disposable alts). I'm notified whenever someone rezzes a product that self-deletes because of the owner being blacklisted. It hasn't happened more than 10 times to my recollection. I offered support to work out the problem in most cases (reminder - names are added manually, not detected using some wild-ass script like this Cybernetics crap).

I don't wiretap - this would, first of all, cause massive lag. Every single product listening on channel 0 for all chat, then IMing it to me? No thanks. Second of all, you assume I have the need to listen to people talking in SL - you can also just walk up close and stand on the other side of the wall if it's really that important. For me, I've got other things to do than act like the super-spy of the grid.

My products aren't "lacking" anything that was advertised with them. I don't know where you came up with that assumption (maybe from your ass?).

They don't come with extra "spy" features like you claim - this script is also vital to updating, etc. and in 99% of customer experiences it only does that. If you're lucky to be one of the 1%, then you've shown to me beyond a reasonable doubt beforehand that you are a significant threat to my company. I suppose you refuse to install home security systems as well?

Again, I provide a full refund for those whose blacklist status can't be worked out (simply out of the generosity of my heart).

Finally, let me make this abundantly clear - my company policy, which is easily available by clicking a button on the vendor, states all of these terms. Nobody has complained to me about it yet.

"I wouldn't be too surprised if your legitimate customers would start looking into copyright infringing techniques for the sole purpose of using the stuff they paid for without all the fascist surveillance crap you've been kindly packing in there. To my eyes, a fully justified decision."

Go take your meds and wait a few hours before coming back, please. By the way, you know that operating system you're running? It's got more "fascist surveillance crap" than my products ever will.

@ Senban Babii

I like to think of myself as a reasonably transparent person. Most of my daily activities are relayed into SL to my friends and those around me. I even build most of my products right in my stores, which provides excellent customer feedback during the scripting process. My most recent invention, a second-generation product, has been almost entirely designed by customer input. People just swarm around the store when I'm there and ask if such and such a feature will be in it. If I didn't think of it, in it goes.

As such, I have been asked about the blacklist script several times. Most questions can be easily answered and, once more, nobody has effectively complained about it. As of this product, I'm considering removing it simply because the product communicates with other products solely using my off-world server, which happens to be its main feature. If someone happened to copybot it, they would have to script their own PHP script, pay for hosting fees, etc. (which, I assume, is far above your head) because all communications are encrypted and vital data (object names, owner names, rolling update and communications security codes, etc.) is included with each and every transmission, which would give away any hints of the "address" being occupied by a copybotted product. If the "address" is noted to be used by a copybotted product, I can always block it.

I do understand, however, that some companies are very secretive - for me, I post updates to the group and news feeds as much as possible since my company is only comprised of but two scripters and we don't exactly make big money off of the operation (yet). However, some big businesses simply don't care about the customer and they're in it to make money. Me? I don't really care. I just spend time scripting things to waste time and charge up my general scripting skills in case, god forbid, I ever need to fall back on a job as a code optimizer.

@ Jahar Aabye

Have you ever played a Punkbuster-enabled game? Or even a VAC-protected game? I don't have any qualms with VAC (because, for the most part, it's passive and solid) but Punkbuster is just a pain in the ass.

Let me explain: it demands to be updated every time you join a server (which can take up to 15 minutes just sitting there waiting for the damned thing to download), you can't refute bans, and bans are always permanent MAC bans. I was unfortunate enough to experience a false positive and was instantly banned with no manual check and nobody would listen to my rebuttal. As it turns out, this was a time period when Windows 7 was in early beta. Apparently Punkbuster didn't play well with Windows 7 and had blatantly assumed that one of its services was shut down by a rogue program to avoid detection. Even nowadays you have to go through a topsy-turvy mish-mash of wild settings and fixes just to get Punkbuster to work on your Windows 7 box... and they're STILL refusing to support Windows 7, even though new games (BF2:BC2, anyone?) are actively using the service! I didn't even remember I was banned until I downloaded the beta (along with pre-ordering the game) and discovered my laptop was banned! (Fortunately, the laptop fried itself and I've got a shiny new desktop in the mail. Interestingly, I pulled out some money from SL to cover the cost of shipping and rush service.)

@ WTF?

You could just look in SL and check my Picks tab instead of being an immature asshole about the whole ordeal.

Now that that's off my chest, let me point out the company policy available through all vendors (even affiliate vendors!) that clearly states that 1.) purchasing any product is automatic legal consent to the company policy and 2.) products can be self-deleted or self-detached if the purchaser poses a threat to the integrity of the company. However, all situations that can't be sorted out result in a full refund simply to avoid any legal issues. One more time, and I hope this will be the last: we reserve the right to refuse service to anyone and everyone at any time for any or no reason at all, as does every single business in the United States.

@ Anonymous

HALP TEH INTARNET SPIES R WATCHING MEEEEEE!

@ Bonnie

It doesn't use any resources until it is clicked by me (then it opens a dialog box and listens for 30 seconds, then removes the listen after an option is clicked or it times out). If you want to complain about resources being used up, ask Skills if you can see his bot farm.

[bubba]

There are a few things that bother me about this.

The seller's back ground and reputation. Interesting thing i found through search. Skills takes the 'once a copybotters, always a copybotter' approach, does that mean she still is to?

http://www.hangars-liquides.com/hl-simulator/

Her gemini system is aimed to thwart the casual users of copybot viewers, but apparently if this article and quotes are true, she not only copied for her own use, but also for profit by reselling copybotted objects, which is far worse.

The FAQ claims no other information is taken, besides your UUID and name? How are they finding alts names then? Shes already been banned for copy theft, is identity theft next, because all that im reading so far, and ive read many forum posts, is that the automated system somehow hacks into your app_data folder to get those alts names.

Does this happen only on avatars the system deems bad, or anyone that passes through the system? 100% safe and reliable? I'm sure JLU thought their files were safe. What happens when someone publishes that list? I have alts i dont want my partner, my family, my friends or business partners to find.

I dont copboy, yet i dont spend alot either, if i knew what sims employ this system, i wont be visiting them. Magika and insulico will never get my little bit of business.

Im all for stopping the copybotters....but the chance of a false positive, my alts revealed, the developers reputation.........find another way to deal with copybotters besides hacking into my files content theif!!