Joshua Nightshade Lies: Revisiting CopyBot

I've long had to battle the odious little creep Joshua Nightshade -- I have my basic set of rebuttals here. But for the public record, let me go over this latest piece of shit from the puny little asshole. Two years since the CopyBot disaster, the issue remains more live than ever; CopyBot in fact is still used inworld. 

"Lo inadvertently just found this for me, when I had been searching for it earlier.

Second Life Herald: Fleeced [CORRECTED]

In that SL Herald piece, Prok adamantly claimed that the Electric Sheep Company was responsible for the creation of Copybot on behalf of a RL client. Despite being corrected in the comments of that entry (you can read them), Prokofy still continued to assert it was true and the ESC were lying.

The ESC took the time to respond to it here:

The Daily Graze » Blog Archive » Software Theater

and eventually Urizenus edited Prok's article with the disclaimer you see at the top, leading to war. Prok still never retracted it herself, still maintains it was true, still maintains she wasn't wrong. Even in the ESC's blog entry Prokofy is unrepentant, insulting the ESC and calling them liars.

That's Prokofy. That's how she operates. Frankly I wish someone would sue her into oblivion, finally."

FALSE, all of it.

Urizenus did not edit this piece. I was the one who immediately responded on the Herald with a full explanation of how the story came about (read the comments), but I couldn't literally make the correction on this piece, because back at the time, my access was blocked. It was Walker Spaight who later added the phrase CORRECTED. And I was happy to correct a *factual error* on one narrow point, and did so immediately: the ESC in fact did not have any client, a garment company, that had commissioned such a thing as Copybot.  Far from being "unrepentant," I simply wrote the retraction and published it in the comments right away.

I had written the story originally this in good faith, not making it up, because I had sources telling me this. In fact, it turned out, I had *false information from a source who was paid to lie to me* and corroboration from another source who was going by hearsay, as it turned out. So no, the ESC did NOT have a client that commissioned Copybot; they merely had staff who knew about and played with CopyBot (they went to its debut on November 7). Someone did, however.

That someone was Eddie Stryker/John Hurliman, head of Libsl, who *did* have a client -- of course, he like other LibSL grieftards, saw nothing wrong with hawking opensource by day and demanding everything be ripped and open, but working proprietary code by night for paying clients, using that same opensource, so that the code then got closed. That's the OS hypocrisy for you.

Those facts aren't hidden; Eddie states this openly on his blog in December 2006. And it wasn't a garment company, but a rock band; they needed him to make bots that could be cloned and set up shards. Their outfits, props, attachments, etc. all had to be identical. So evidently, in pursuing the goal of making SL into a sharded multi-sim identical experience, Eddie hit on Copy-Bot, and began to pass it around, have fun with it, copy people's avatars with it -- and sell it.

The Copybot scandal broke out in November 2006 and I covered the issue assiduously, of course often having to avoid the sharp elbows of the aggressive Pixeleen, who kept trying to jump on the story and report it otherwise, without consulting with me. Far from somehow "denying" that it was not the Sheep that had this client, I've explained that it wasn't, in comments anyone can see were posted back at that time, and the public record from Eddie and other explains, what this story is. So Joshua has completely and falsely described this incident and my role in it, and is, of course, a raging asshole.

Again, this issue of the Sheep and their "client" was mistaken; but that's not the issue, however. A correction was made happily and quickly and accurately, but the main issue remained.

That issue I wished to draw the attention of the public to -- and still stand by -- is of the "what did they know, and when did they know it" sort. Because by their cynicism, passivity, secret cheerleading, they made it possible. And they went on later to continue to scorn the SL public with the opt-out forced data-scraping bots that everyone had to shriek at them to turn off; they helped usher in the era of bots for camping and casinos and trafficking by refusing to be critical, or condemnatory of LibSL  and its products (even Adam Zaius saw the prudence and politics of quietly leaving LibSL at that time); and they remained belligerent and nasty, trying to portray me as having something wrong with me and not telling the truth, when it fact, I got to the heart of the matter: they were cynical and exploitative about the SL platform and its people and didn't view Copybot even as a legitimate issue. Cory Edo held lessons on it and tried to underplay its devastating role, even. Perhaps this cynicism is at the root of why they are not in SL any more and...guess what! -- are making proprietary worlds. Yes, worlds where their clients sure as hell hang on to their IP and control the door.

So, a member of the Sheep staff at that time WAS a member of LibSL at that time; and he did know about CopyBot; and he did take an interest in it and chat about it and practice with it. And the ESC made no secret of their interest in following the exploits -- literally! -- of LibSL so they could benefit from it for their business ultimately. The ESC, too, had need of a sharded multi-sim copied avatar experience: for the NBC Christmas special, which totally paralyzed SL and LL staff for weeks while they ran it. They make much over the fact that CopyBot, one kind of program doing one kind of thing, logging on and copying other avatars, is ostensibly different than Shardatar, or whatever we're to call those legions of duplicates who also log on as clones. This is splitting hairs; they all come from the same DNA.

There was also the highly salient issue of FlipperPAY Peregrine, who sold his business to the Sheep and remained in their group and was a consultant for SL Boutique after the sale (it later was renamed OnRez). He learned about CopyBot well ahead of the scandal; he as an old FIC understood its terrible ramifications; he claimed he tried to stop it by talking to his LibSl pals; but he didn't try very hard. He didn't get the Lindens on it; indeed, had he gotten *his* Lindens on it, they might not have cared.

Now, I drilled on this, and continued to ask, especially after I got a sighting of the cluster of bots on the Sheep island (back in the day when such bots were still a novelty!) , say, how did you get all those multisharded avatar outfits? are we to believe you bought 50 sets of this or that, and paid this or that content creator for 50 outfits? or? Well, such questions were waved away.

We may never know, unless an ex-Sheep comes forward and admits "what they knew and when they knew it". And it will likely never be a full story that will account for all aspects of the disaster in SL. That's ok, I will live with that, and keep asking the question. I view that as my job.

Comments

[Desmond Shang]

Prok, look at the youtube content on Eddie Stryker's blog of the Longrange concert.

Look at who is in it, and talk to them if you want to know the truth.

That's enough said by me. Well, alright, one more thing. The entry way and hive-like venue of the Long Range concert was mostly made by Caledon residents and it rocks, hard. :)

[Prokofy]

Um, Desmond, you're showing a regenerated capacity for being a tool today.

I don't know *what* the fuck your point is about this, but you can't even see the avatars or their titles in this movie. It's the typically grainy stupid SL machinima that was more cool to make than watch. Nothing about it rocks, um, "hard," sorry, but hey, use my blog any time for an infomercial.

Rather than being coy about your involvement in the early CopyBot experiment in Eddie's paid gig, why not tell us who can shed more light on this?

And yeah, I'm well aware that they, and he, and you, will say, ohh but this isn't CopyBot, this is just ShardBot or ConcertBot his good twin, not his evil twin, why it helps Art, and Culture, and it helps Desmond sell rentals, so it's a Good Bot!

To which I can only say, Desmond, I hope something like CopyBot bites you in the ass hard someday.

Hard.

[Lecktor Hannibal]

LOL

[Desmond Shang]

Prok, come on, you really didn't do your homework on this one and never had. No grand conspiracy here - and that's why you utterly missed it.

The Long Range concert was one of the coolest things going on at the time, a zillion people were involved in it, and it was the big 'secret' in front of everyone's nose. Why? Because it was no secret at all. It wasn't trying to be a secret. It was about as much a secret as a hockey game playing in your home town.

Look for conspiracy all you want. But it's more like some kids got hold of the Zamboni before the hockey game and went joyriding, rather than some sinister plot.

Any number of people could have showed you the very public event, or you could have simply attended yourself. Similar avatars were performing in different regions simultaneously, so lots of people could attend ostensibly the same event. Easy concept.

But with the level of vitriol, false rumours and nonsense going on at the time, I sure wasn't about to stick my toe in and explain it to you. Simply didn't need the grief. Still don't need it now.

Anyway, since you just aren't getting it, the following is very public knowledge and always was, as far back as I can remember:

http://www.sinewavecompany.com/about

They provide animation and event solutions. Not secret! Not evil! Not shadowy figures!

But of course, the conspiracy theory is far more compelling, I guess.

[Adam Frisby]

Actually, I can pop my head in here and say the concertbot wasnt related to the testclient copybot at all (hold with me here). Didnt share a line of code with it.

The reason being, I wrote the concertbot (not John), and it was really 'dumb', it literally just logged in and sat on a prim. It didnt copy any avatars or items or clothing, we had to manually attach them all (x60 avs, it was a royal pain in the ass).

All the animations, etc were simply scripts inside the objects the bots sat on. The bots we used for the concert also werent the mannequins, all the bots had the name 'Longranger' or the band member name. (They were also registered manually which was a pain).

[Prokofy]

Desmond,

Yes, indeed, you *are* a tool.

Who said there was a conspiracy? It's more about cynical, manipulative assholery visible on the right IRC channels. I sure didn't say it was a "conspiracy"; I reported on it, duh, after being deluged with notecards about it for weeks. It's not like this is some new story. It's an old story. In fact, don't you remember my first report on it:

http://www.secondlifeherald.com/slh/2006/11/bots_back_in_th.html

Which was BEFORE the CopyBot scandal?

I had that story for some time, but waited to confirm it.

"Everybody" knew about this -- but not all at once, it unravelled over a period of weeks in late 2006. Eddie was hired to do this, because of existing LibSl work.

And...note the dates here:
http://www.sinewavecompany.com/node/36

"1/03/2007 - Another Dimension Media Ltd raises first round of capital and appoints Adam Frisby as Chief Technology Architect"

About 6 weeks after the first CopyBot tests and appearances.

The relationship between Eddie and Adam and this caper wasn't as clear in November 2006 as it was later.

Duh? I get the concept of sharding and making er, "copied bots" to do this? Duh? And got it back then? (BTW, does it strike anybody else that this is really a dumbass, clunky way of doing things? Like anyone would find it very compelling to be on a sim with puppets being run as bots, instead of watching a movie, or using the stream?)

The question was merely who was paying, and who knew what, when, and who understood the community consequences, when.

You're just not *getting the point*. That this is what Copybot *is* -- or rather its "close relative" -- and it's not some "vitriol" or "false rumours" -- it is what it is. What is "false" in this story, Desmond? The Sheep all got together and danced around with this November 7, 2006 and thought it was fabulous.

Hamlet even cloned himself and thought it was just a blast.

My, aren't *you* dancing around that now and pretending there was some uber-sophisticated ingroup with yourself in the center of it -- look ma, no shadowy figures!

Of course it was public knowledge to the cognoscenti, and as you can see, *Eddie wrote about it in his blog at the time*. Others did too (google them):

http://secondcampus.blogspot.com/2006/11/interview-with-baba-yamamoto-about.html

http://www.secondlifeinsider.com/2006/11/14/copybot-anger-rises/

"the geeks acted surprised" etc. Read down into the comments.

Adam played poker face when he left LibSl for political reasons, when confronted, temporarily.

Remember Baba Yamamoto? Remember the transcript that was on the server with "pl" in the address?
All the references to it once on sluniverse.com are scrubbed now because Cristiano overhauled his site, but here's where you can still get it:

http://web.archive.org/web/20071203020701/http://sluniverse.com/forums/Topic12867-1-1.aspx

Did you somehow miss both this chat, its meaning, and concern even from content maker Cristiano at the time, Desmond?

Belaya is the only one who behaved like a human being in that chat; Hurliman, Baba, etc. are all monsters.

And Bushing often wonders why I refuse to shake his hand at Caledon parties!

I get all the provenance, limitations, and "misunderstandings" about CopyBot. "What it can and cannot do" blah blah. The point is the psychological terror that it unleashed, and the havoc it wrecked, which persists to this day, where I still see that ridiculous "anti-CopyBot" script babbling on stores I land in.

So again, I can only redouble my wishes: that you are bitten in the ass *hard*.

[Prokofy]

Adam,

Don't you remember the conversation we had in late 2006 about LibSL, and your "leaving" LibSL?

>Actually, I can pop my head in here and say the concertbot wasnt related to the testclient copybot at all (hold with me here). Didnt share a line of code with it.

This is the sort of literalist obfuscation that tekkies can technically say is true. But they are Siamese twins.

>The reason being, I wrote the concertbot (not John), and it was really 'dumb', it literally just logged in and sat on a prim. It didnt copy any avatars or items or clothing, we had to manually attach them all (x60 avs, it was a royal pain in the ass).

You act as if there is no Internet.

Read what John wrote about his own role:
http://www.jhurliman.org/index.php/2006/long-range-in-second-life-or-cleverly-disguised-robots/

"The solution that was thought up was to “shard” the concert, with 12 identical islands running the same concert and load balancing people between them. The island setup was cloned, some very fancy LSL scripting kept the show and the lighting in sync, but there was one remaining issue. With five band members and 12 islands how do we get 60 band members playing their instruments at the same time? The answer was to use libsecondlife to log in 60 “actor” bots that would appear, set their appearance, and look for a specially marked object that was their “seat”. Once the bot was attached to this seat (which were really just small out of the way objects) the seat would trigger an animation for that actor to play the appropriate instrument. Using some hidden throttling techniques in Second Life I managed to get all 60 bots running from a single server, which might be a new record for stable connections with libsecondlife."

>All the animations, etc were simply scripts inside the objects the bots sat on. The bots we used for the concert also werent the mannequins, all the bots had the name 'Longranger' or the band member name. (They were also registered manually which was a pain).

Again, dodging the issue that numerous accounts with the last name "Mannequin" were visible at the time in the People list.

http://inacentaur.com/hamletblog/2008/01/22/simulbot-beta-program-now-accepting-affiliate-sims/

Overview: Over a year ago, John Hurliman brought a rock band of 5 into SL, and managed to “simulSim” them on 12 sims to escape the agent limitations of a single sim in simultaneous performances across the grid. This was a benchmark for 2006. For 2008, using state of the art bot technology that has been developed from the ground up by BotSL, the SL Shakespeare Company hopes to have simultaneous performances on over 120 other venues across the grid for our full-length live performance in November.

If you had to manually dress them and *cough* bought each and every oufit from them, what of it?

At the same time, using much of the same technology, LibSL had on their library, openly for a time (before it got closed to a log-in),the CopyBot, that in fact could clone aspects of the avatar and his items, and which in a later iteration, Baba put a "consent" card into it to somehow take care of the problem of the unwilling cloning.

Card was dated: 2006-11-12 22:58:52 note card

Author: Baba Yamamoto

"
By requesting to be copied, you agree not to hold either the owner and/or creator of this bot or the libsecondlife team responsible for any loss of financial gain and/or personal uniqueness which may result from being copied.

This bot will temporarily duplicate your appearance and attachments without heed to the permissions set by the creator. Objects and appearance will be purged from inventory at the end of the day and will not be used in any way past the initial demonstration.

Do you agree to allow the bot to copy your appearance?

Type "agree" if you agree to these terms."

Here's Baba's cynical, distracting bullshit on all this at the time:
http://www.babasucks.com/2006/119/stealin-yo-shit/

Which is just like your cynical, distracting bullshit relentlessly published on your own blog.

[Prokofy]

A useful conversation from that era to review, one week after the debut of Copybot
2006-11-15 20:22:04

Prokofy Neva: Hi, I don't know if you saw my question before I crashed off line, I'm concerned about the way libsecondlife keeps opening its doors to griefing v-5 alts.
Static Sprocket: I could barely read anything, there was way too much chatter
Prokofy Neva: ok just a sec
Prokofy Neva: ok, first thing, the chatting thing that cries out !quit all the time is probably useless against CopyBot, correct?'
Static Sprocket: It will work against the original version
Prokofy Neva: and there really is no "fix" or "script" or "workaround" to stop it, or things that will come like it, but one can only hope that its poor and incomplete replicating abilities and the technical knowledge required to operate it are mild deterrents.
Static Sprocket: but it is trivial for a software programmer to change copybot to ignore it
Prokofy Neva: well but that's irrelevant when there are othe versions of it out ther enow, and people see the Iquit thing doesn't stop it
Prokofy Neva: well only 10 percent of the people on here are likely to be software programmers
Prokofy Neva: so that's not a solution to quell people's anger
Prokofy Neva: it's actual copying and actual value for resale of copied things seems minimal by some accounts, and that itself is a plus for now
Prokofy Neva: I also asked about the tendency for libsecond life to look the other way while the group fills up with griefing v-5 alts
Prokofy Neva: the proximity of Huns and others to the W-hat leads to them constantly tacitly or even actively aiding and abbetting these griefers like Bolshevik Revolution and Prim Revolution
Static Sprocket: As for a "fix" -- the simple plain truth is
Prokofy Neva: you know have invitation -only status for the actual access to code -- yet clearly it is still being accessed, and clearl people are just dining out using the libsl monker
Static Sprocket: the information for rendering a prim or a texture must be sent to the offial SL client so it can display it
Prokofy Neva: yes we've heard all that
Static Sprocket: because that data is sent to the client, that data can be passed to a new program to make a copy -- so ... No there is no way LL can "fix" this
Prokofy Neva: anybody can grab the stream anywhere, yes, but a) they have to have some technical ability and b) what they copy has to look good and be resellable
Prokofy Neva: so I'm trying to assess what we really ahve here then
Static Sprocket: okay, I'm not sure exactly what your question is -- but if your asking "Does what libsl do make it easier for people to decode things from SL, and create new things" then the answer is yes
Prokofy Neva: no that's not at all what I'm asking
Prokofy Neva: and perhaps you can't get out of the weeds of it and pull back enough to see my question
Static Sprocket: okay, please try rewording your question
Prokofy Neva: it's clear that WHEN it copies WHAT it copies is crappy
Prokofy Neva: it can't save them properly
Prokofy Neva: it can only copy some things like shoes with sterling capacity
Prokofy Neva: and it can only take some of those things and resell them with a copyable/resellable status
Static Sprocket: correct, it was a work in progress for understanding how to decode prims and make new prims -- this was not, nor was it ever intended to be a product
Prokofy Neva: so I'm trying to see if it's actual damage is really anything of note
Prokofy Neva: if it could copy expensive skins and jewelry and clone them out in perfect copies with sellable clicked off, you could worry more
Prokofy Neva: but sincei t can't do that, why isn't the actual capacity being examined and documented?
Prokofy Neva: why is Eddy calling it a "rogue project" when you're saying what soundsl ike it being an actual legit project albeit with a different aim
Static Sprocket: okay, your asking more then one thing there -- let me answer each
Static Sprocket: As for copying expensive skins, that was actually quite easy to do before the libsl project ever wrote a single line of code
Static Sprocket: people have been using a program call GLIntercept to do that for nearly a year now
Static Sprocket: any texture, skin, clothering or otherwise can be ripped, re-uploaded, and sold as yourown
Static Sprocket: this is not new
Prokofy Neva: Static stop we know all that
Prokofy Neva: and that's not relevant to keep hammering on that as your argumentation
Static Sprocket: ok, then why did you ask "if it could copy expensive skins"
Prokofy Neva: because in fact the people who use/operate/tweak Glintercept haven't been fucking little victory dancers stealing stuff and squealing in glee.
Prokofy Neva: I didn't ask that
Prokofy Neva: I said that as a given hypothetical
Prokofy Neva: I'm asking about Copybot
Prokofy Neva: you are distracting the subject to Glintercept and basically saying "don't ask what we can or can't do, really, or our responsibility beacuse everybody does it"
Prokofy Neva: "why, Glintercept does it"
Prokofy Neva: But Glintercept didn't admit V-5 assholes in to terrorize people, eh?
Prokofy Neva: that's the difference
Static Sprocket: Uh, ok, then no, the version of copybot that we had in our source code repository cannot make perfect copies
Prokofy Neva: So I want to keep the focus on what Copybot can do
Prokofy Neva: ok that wasn't hard was it/ why the constant distractino and subterfuge in every convo with libbers?
Prokofy Neva: "why you people need to know that the whole INternet can copy itself, too bad for you"
Prokofy Neva: we know that we're not stupid
Static Sprocket: because your asking a simple 5 word question, by spewing 5 sentances at me
Prokofy Neva: wha't different about this is the social intent behind the sudden abrupt changes to the world
Prokofy Neva: no
Static Sprocket: Keep the question simple, and my answers will be as well
Prokofy Neva: you are distracting the subject by going over to discuss Glintercept and tell me well the whole Internet is filled with copiers
Prokofy Neva: so don't be so upset that we copied
Static Sprocket: ask me a question
Prokofy Neva: but people ARE upset and then the thing to do is examine WHAT it can do
Prokofy Neva: not THAT it might or others might
Static Sprocket: thats not a question, I'll answer a question if you ask one
Prokofy Neva: so can it copy a $1500 skin perfectly and offer it for resale as a copyable/transferrale good?
Static Sprocket: The version of CopyBot made by libsl cannot
Prokofy Neva: I'm directing you to stay on topic, Static, since I would have expected better from you, not this double talk others are engaging in
Prokofy Neva: ok try to give me a straight answer
Prokofy Neva: not double talk
Prokofy Neva: the version made by libsel sounds like this
Prokofy Neva: "We have an official version we can answer for, but rogue copies we can't
Prokofy Neva: is that correct or not?
Static Sprocket: We made the source cod available, other people can change that to make it do other things.
Prokofy Neva: Can among the other things that the other people grabbing and tweakign it can do is make a $1500 skin copyable and sellable in a perfect dpulicate?
Prokofy Neva: I don't see any documented cases of that, it seems not, but can it?
Prokofy Neva: I 'm an educated, and intelligent person, Static, and I do resent being treated as if this is such a superior and arcane area of human knowledge that you cannot explain it.
Prokofy Neva: And that's what is happening all over with this constrovery
Static Sprocket: Our copybot did not download textures, nor did it save them. So no it could not be used to copy and sell an expensive skin
Prokofy Neva: good!
Prokofy Neva: but people are not persuaded because if they see an alt decked out in a perfectly obvious replica, they think, well, what next?
Prokofy Neva: How much programming ability is needed to access your open code and tweak it and play with it? or use any copies that got out even if you closed it off?
Prokofy Neva: is it like LSL scripting that 18-year-old kids learn after school? or more complex?
Static Sprocket: That is a tough question. Because at my day job we used to have an intern who was 17hrs old, home schooled, that was a better programmer then some of our senior staff
Static Sprocket: I would say that it would take someone, who had some experience programming
Static Sprocket: A complete novice could not do it
Static Sprocket: at least, not without a lot of help from ppl with more experience helping them
Prokofy Neva: Do libsecond life people help V-5 to do these things, or provide an enabling environment for them?
Static Sprocket: I do not know who V-5 is. libsl is a loose knit group of developers, not a single entity. I do not know if any other libsl contribtor is helping them
Prokofy Neva: Statis, can you grasp the fact that over and over and OVER again
Prokofy Neva: your loose-knit group has housed and harboured the v-5 people who have repeatedly crashed the grid?
Prokofy Neva: do you not following the comings and goings of Gene Replacement, or Prim Revolution maker of the bot?
Static Sprocket: No I can't
Prokofy Neva: I mean are you blind to this?
Prokofy Neva: well could you suggest to the owner of the group to move to invitation only?
Static Sprocket: We do not "house" them
Prokofy Neva: You do
Prokofy Neva: they join, and dine out on the connection
Prokofy Neva: If you feel you are responsible, they aren't, and they give you a bad name
Static Sprocket: the group is not a SL thing, the code is what is refered to as open source, *ANYONE* can access it
Static Sprocket: we make it free and available
Static Sprocket: because we will not dvelop something then horde it to ourselves, and not let other people use it
Static Sprocket: that would be like making a new clase of citizin in SL, where only they could make notecards
Static Sprocket: the things we do, allow anyone to make tools that help everyone. And yes, those same things allow people to do bad things as well
Static Sprocket: As someone else in the meeting today said (paraphrasing) "You can use a hammer to build a house, or you can use it to kill someone"
Prokofy Neva: well you do more than that Static
Prokofy Neva: you bdon't just have it out there where the mass of good users might cancel out the minority of bad
Prokofy Neva: you have it here in this world which is limited
Prokofy Neva: and you have within your group, constantly supported, constantly apologized for, the v-5
Prokofy Neva: this isn't joe Blow grabbing it off the Internet
Prokofy Neva: it's Bolshevik Revolution deliberately grabbing it to cause harm in a small village he knows he can do that in
Prokofy Neva: with your housing
Prokofy Neva: and Huns Valen's apologetics
Prokofy Neva: it's a socially different act than putting it on the Internet like cute ftp was 15 years ago
Prokofy Neva: your failure to grasp these different social settings and imagine social facts don't count as science and aern't worth your time is always chilling
Static Sprocket: we have no way of identifying Bolshevik R from any other person that goes to our website
Prokofy Neva: You and the leaders can repudiate v-5 and their griefing, which youu never do, you can disassociate yourself from it
Static Sprocket: We give our code to everyone
Static Sprocket: what they do with it is up to them
Prokofy Neva: If Sakharov and Oppenheimer said this about the knowledge to make the hydrogen and nuclear bombs, you might have found that irresponsible, no?
Prokofy Neva: "knowledge wants to be free"
Prokofy Neva: and Stalin and Beria get the bomb; and Eisenhower gets the bomb
Prokofy Neva: and that's too bad
Static Sprocket: I have yet to see a libsl program that will kill people in the RW
Prokofy Neva: well you feel that having people's Second Lifes harmed is ok, just because they are virtual?
Prokofy Neva: you sound pretty cynical and jaded
Prokofy Neva: Right now it's just girls who in RL are part-time Walmart clerks angry at you with your attitudes
Prokofy Neva: but when it's Congressional committees and government officials, then it will be different
Static Sprocket: Well, I remember a time when you actually went around praising me for enable people in SL
Static Sprocket: enabling people in SL
Static Sprocket: *we* do not grief people, we don't encourage it, we don't condone it
Prokofy Neva: You may have good intentions and do enable people as you did with helping with the infohub
Static Sprocket: we simply make tools that allow people to use SL in new ways, sometimes betterways
Prokofy Neva: but if you stand idly by and pretend to be blind to v-5 that's reprehensible
Static Sprocket: and it's up to each person to decide how they are going to use them
Prokofy Neva: you ahve no idea how severely they have griefed me and others, unleashing the tub girl script, crashing sims, doing all kinds of horrid things constantly
Prokofy Neva: you do condone it if you have them in your group and can't eject known offenders'
Static Sprocket: I'm aware of greifers that do bad things
Prokofy Neva: Jesse Malthus did eject some of the known griefers but then someone else in libsl took away his ejection powers
Static Sprocket: I am not involved in the in-world libsecondlife group
Static Sprocket: it has very little baring on anything we do
Static Sprocket: we don't even use it for announcements
Prokofy Neva: what is your purpose in remaining in it if it has no life supposedly not even announcements?

[Prokofy]

Sorry, Mannequin was the *first* name with a bunch of other new alt names at the time -- not last name.

Look them up -- they still exist. Like Mannequin Revolution. All born November 7, which is the Soviet Revolution Day.

[Prokofy]

Hamlet Linden's asshole commentary of that era:
http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2006/11/second_life_clo.html

Shows the machinima of him and others, including Gwyn, glorying in CopyBot.

[Prokofy]

Also note Gwyn's self-serving comment, and her tangent about "witch-hunting" blah blah, but an interesting note that differs from Adam's memory of this story (which is "But I wrote the code for Concertbot").

"I was worried that Eddy Stryker's cool concept of using meshed avatars for AIs, bots, and mannequins for clothes shops would never see the deserved light on NWN because of the controversy."

[Prokofy]

My original piece on the CopyBot -- it's funny how, even though I very forthrightly explained in this article that I "got it" that the Metaverse is all about copying and you can't do much about it, I have to sit through lectures stating this fact.

http://www.secondlifeherald.com/slh/2006/11/clones_pwnd.html

Another useful article to read from that era:

http://www.secondlifeherald.com/slh/2006/11/is_linden_lab_s.html

[Adam Frisby]

The big thing here is as I keep saying - the concertbot isn't the same thing as the copybot. Even remotely.

The copybot was primarily Eddy/John's creation (although the first version was done by a guy named LanceJ).

The concert bot was incapable of copying anything, cloning any appearances or anything of the like - as I said above, it literally logged in and sat on a prim. It was a really dumb bot.

Now, John did get involved in the concert bot - back in July or so of that year, he took the version I wrote and finished it (which is probably why he's got the credit).

The result was still a really dumb bot - it didnt copy anything, it just logged in and sat on a prim (albeit more reliably).

The feature list of that bot was effectively:
- Log in
- Tell the sim we're here
- Sit on a specific prim
- Stay logged in
- Quit when it's over

Copybot itself is something else. There's absolutely zero connection between them, other than using libsecondlife and John being involved temporarily.

As I have said before - John wrote copybot seperately as a testing tool quite a bit later.

Certain idiots then went around publisicing it as a infringement tool, willfully ignored the resulting consequences and the rest is history.

[Desmond Shang]

>>Who said there was a conspiracy? It's more about cynical, manipulative assholery visible on the right IRC channels.

The way you say it right there, it sounds exactly like people are Conspiring. On an IRC channel. Hard to conspire if you don't share! That's where the conspiracy theory angle comes from.

As for who knew what, when - to be honest I don't read the Herald often, nor do I urge people to do press releases every time a pin drops on the grid.

>>The question was merely who was paying, and who knew what, when, and who understood the community consequences, when.

Well Adam seems to have cleared up the first part. I thought they were using Eddie's code (Eddie was around, I never asked) but it seems not. Who understood community consequences - Prok, does anyone understand them even now? I had a wave of shop closings back then on my estate due to the copybot thing. It subsided for the most part when illicit copybot use on the main grid earned people a perma-ban.

It still looms large in some other ways; a Caledon citizen recently found unauthorised sinewave animations on another grid (and reported it to Easy). This sort of thing isn't unexpected, though. Code like this would have been written *anyway* - just because it's possible, and the opensource grids are starving for content.

You've corrected the Sheep allegations (rightly) in the past, but without doubt there were false assumptions, and if anyone missed the vitriol, it's still here with a vengeance. I'm not wishing *you* ill.

>>My, aren't *you* dancing around that now and pretending there was some uber-sophisticated ingroup with yourself in the center of it -- look ma, no shadowy figures!

Not at all. I was very much on the periphery of a large collaborative effort, and simply knew it was all going on. Most I did was help find some inworld talent, and a little testing. I won't pretend to know why Adam did this or that, or what motivated Baba - everyone's an individual.

I saw the chatlogs, and if you dug around I was present at the anti-copybot meetings too - a few of us pressed for Linden Research to take the extra step and remove unlawful copiers from the grid when caught. Within days, we got our wish.

>>And Bushing often wonders why I refuse to shake his hand at Caledon parties!

Who is Bushing? Not a name I'm familiar with.

[Prokofy]

Desmond,

No, Adam has not told the truth about this whatsoever, and he should know better, as it is on the public record.

Eddy Stryker worked on Copybot and Concertbot at the same time. The reason the story could come out that CopyBot was "Eddy working on something for a client" was that in fact he was working on this very rock concert sharding.

You're also forgetting the birth of the Mannequins and their birthdate: November 7, 2006 (Revolution Day), the Lindens' use of the last name Revolution conveniently at that time in the People list; Prim Revolution who sold the CopyBot; the mounting concern about all this from insiders in LibSL who contacted me -- multiple sources, concerned about IP protection and the assholery involved.

The testing and debut of Copybot November 7, 2006, with the Sheep members -- Jerry, Flipper, etc. etc. dancing around. Hamlet and Gwyn and others also testing it and even making a machinima of it.

As in RL, so in SL, things like CopyBot barely affect the snobby Caledon, where people rely on closed sims, high-end expensive content that they sell a few times when its new, and care less about when it is copied or hacked later (or give away for free years later when they are bored with it, eh, Desmond?), and have a much more devastating affect on Mainland, where people sell $30 gadgets, not $3000 gadgets, and who are paralyzed in fear.

When I think of my tenants who were in this wave of closings and protests, and when I think of the newbies who had worked in good faith to open gadget or furniture or clothing stores, and were discouraged and fearful and angry about this and quit, I get into a white fury. I get into an absolute white fury that you fucking assholes can't grasp this, and continue laughing about kids on Caledon making a fun movie, and then shrugging because the Lindens technically "banned" it (like that lasted for Eddy Stryker?!). Fuck you.

And once again, the fucked-up cynicism: "the Internet copies itself," "if you see it you copy it, and this is the future, and opensource blah blah blah."

What is your plan for maintaining the viability of Caledon, Desmond, which is fueled by high-end content makers renting stores and homes? Do you honestly think your smug burghers' RP chat in the Caledon channel is all that is needed to hold it all together and can be replicated on an opensource sim and still make money?

I'd love to see you on Legend City Online, with all your content locked -- and copyable, and no longer in your posession. What, you'll put on your top hat and dance in a machinima, Desmond?

I have to Laugh Out Loud at your notion that "a few of us pressed for Linden Reesarch to take the extra step and remove unlawful copiers from the grid when caught. Within days, we got our wish."

Again, FUCK YOU. It wasn't a few of you on Caledon with your high-and-mightly little tete a tetes with your favourite Lindens. It was hundreds of people on the Mainland, closing grids, demonstrating, yelling in forums, making huge protest groups numbering in the thousands, and pressuring the Lindens before the town hall.

I was banned from the Linden blogs in December 2006 precisely because I went all out for a frank demand to Cory Linden to become accountable over LibSL and CopyBot (go read the transcripts of that time).

So again -- fuck you.

[Prokofy]

Again, because my post got eaten:

>The big thing here is as I keep saying - the concertbot isn't the same thing as the copybot. Even remotely.

This sort of exasperating tekkie literalism doesn't fly. Of course they're the same thing. The literalisms of this or that code can't be allowed to obscure that fact. They perform similar functions. They are logged on remotely with a program; one comes on and hones in on a chair and sits; the other pops out and copies nearby avatars.

You're going to look at me with a straight face and say that the LibSL functions of remotely logging on avatars to perform various functions share absolutely nothing in common?

More to the point, even if somehow they have different copies of different genes, they share the same parents: LibSL. And most to the point: Eddy worked on both.

And not in July -- read his blog. He describes everything in December 2006. He worked on Copybot and ConcertBot both in November -- and before. He was involved in making and selling CopyBot and was suspended for a time. He continued to work on the concert -- read his blog.

>The copybot was primarily Eddy/John's creation (although the first version was done by a guy named LanceJ).

LanceJ is in the IRC channel transcript, and BTW, where Vektor Linden also appears.

On November 7, 2006, accounts were made with the first name "Mannequin". That's how the story of the "garment company" originated. But it was work for a client, and it was LibSL, and it was Eddy. That's the point.

>The concert bot was incapable of copying anything, cloning any appearances or anything of the like - as I said above, it literally logged in and sat on a prim. It was a really dumb bot.

So what? CopyBot, it's genetic cousin, *was* capable, and this was part of the LibSL library, openly available, until Baba put it on a log-on -- and that's what's so hilarious, is that out of one side of your mouths you talk about opensource and giving the code back to the community, but when it becomes controversial, or somebody has to make a buck, whoops, it gets closed to log-ons.

>Now, John did get involved in the concert bot - back in July or so of that year, he took the version I wrote and finished it (which is probably why he's got the credit).

Look at his blog. He worked on them both at the same time. And my, aren't you double-talking now to catch up with the public record, which already told us this.

>The result was still a really dumb bot - it didnt copy anything, it just logged in and sat on a prim (albeit more reliably).

So? He worked on CopyBot *too*.

>The feature list of that bot was effectively:
- Log in
- Tell the sim we're here
- Sit on a specific prim
- Stay logged in
- Quit when it's over

Copybot itself is something else. There's absolutely zero connection between them, other than using libsecondlife and John being involved temporarily.

Uh, well Adam, that "absolutely zero connection between them, other than" is the crux of the matter.

Let me review it all for you again:

1. Eddy Stryker/John Hurliman, leading force behind the reverse
engineering project of LibSL, tacitly and then openly endorsed by the Lindens, made CopyBot and other bots for other functions, introducing all the perniciousness of bots, and very, very little of their benefits, into our world.

2. Eddy Stryker was cynical and heedless about this, joked about it, did nothing to stop bad actors like Baba Yamamoto from taking it and harassing people with it, and even sold it on an alt. He was a college boy, having fun, making money, and it was all 'OH NOES LEARNING' to him. Like you, who made your "million" of SL with land and bots, he could care less about the integrity of the social aspects of the community of SL.

3. As I have said before - John wrote copybot seperately as a testing tool quite a bit later.

Adam, do you read the Internet? Copybot debuted November 7 inworld, and was worked on before that. It was heavily discussed in all kinds of ways on the Herald, with articles parsing intensely what LibSL was doing and what the Sheep were doing with all this. The scandals with it broke around November 12-16, and by December, it was an enormous issue for a town hall with Cory Linden, who was as cynical about it as LibSL, but who was directed by other Lindens, evidently, to make it a crime to *use it wrongly to copy* but not a crime merely to use it and copy "for private use". We all found that astonishingly cynical and corrupt. You didn't. That's why you are in a moral vacuum to this day, with OpenSim.

>Certain idiots then went around publisicing it as a infringement tool, willfully ignored the resulting consequences and the rest is history.

Ok, Adam, let me refresh your memory on this:

Those certain idiots are people you kept dealing with in LibSL.

I contacted you at that time and demanded accountability, as I did from Static and others. I asked why the hell you remained in LibSL when it contained a group of persistent griefers (W-hat, V-5) constantly harassing and savaging my tenants and costing me lost income (um, did that help YOUR rentals, Adam?), but more importantly, making and selling things like CopyBot.

Baba put up a fake apology later removed, dramatically left the group, and came back in, and Eddy was briefly banned, but bailed out by a coding Linden later. But you left. You demonstratively left. You conceded my point.

But of course it was political, as you remained in all kinds of other groups like the Sinewave Bot testing groups with the same people.

You bat your eyelashes and claim no knowledge of all the antics of November 7. But you yourself continue to celebrate November 7 on OpenSim. That's what you're all about.

[Prokofy]

Of course, among the cynical literalist tekkie things said at the time by a number of LibSL members, and fanned and bruited by Gwyn at the time, was this idea that LibSL was big, LibSL was amorphous, LibSL was open, and you couldn't tar every member with the actions of every other member.

However, there's the very salient fact that when Jesse Malthus said he would confront Eddy and others about the v-5 griefers, which he personally saw savagely griefing me and my group, and when he assured me that he would get them expelled and get the group cleaned up, guess what, he came back to me actually puzzled and concerned, because *he couldn't get Eddy to eject them*. *He would not*.

You, however, *left the group*.

Thereby acknowleding that all this fake invocation of tarring and McArthyism was beside the point: the moral thing to do then was to leave -- what you did was the political thing, as you had no morality.

[Prokofy]

BTW, Adam, I notice you don't address the problem of your little boyfriend Joshua who claims that "I was corrected" and "adamantly refused to correct" and all the rest. Fortunately the public record gives the lie to all, as it does to things you claim.

[Desmond Shang]

Prok, I just can't take you seriously with your 'common man mainlander' arguments.

Content gets ripped all the time, but it's the stuff that sells that is mainly targeted. Skin textures, or fancy sculptie shapes and so forth. Nobody's running around copying new Joe Mainlander's $L 30 paperweight or picture frame or what-have-you. Come on.

The people that screamed and got heard were the high end content makers more than anybody. Yes, some of the same people you have called creator-fascists, I think the term was.

>>What is your plan for maintaining the viability of Caledon, Desmond, which is fueled by high-end content makers renting stores and homes?

You'll see soon enough.

>>I was banned from the Linden blogs in December 2006 precisely because I went all out for a frank demand to Cory Linden to become accountable over LibSL and CopyBot (go read the transcripts of that time).

And that's great for activist street cred, but it didn't really change anything. As far as Cory goes, at least, the whole matter is long over.

[Ann Otoole]

the libsl powered data scrapers across the grid are rather interesting and very capable now. I don't recall seeing such activities allowed or disallowed in the TOS which is a legal document. There is a useless blurb in the community standards but that has no legal power. Linden Lab needs to deal with the issue of bots in the TOS end of story and clearly state what is allowed and what is not allowed and then begin enforcing it as unauthorized network access (misdemeanor to felony depending on where/who is the prosecutor).

If Linden Lab will not do this then they can forget about ever being taken seriously as a business platform or a place for companies to do training, etc. You don't see Forterra Systems allowing unauthorized connections/systems/bots/data scrapers on their network.

[Prokofy]

Desmond, you're such an ass. I'm not claiming that Joe Commoner's box is copied. That's just the thing. It's the least likely thing to be copied. But the discouragement and fear spreads just precisely among that class of people and undermines the economy and the world.

We all got it, ages ago, the CopyBot didn't really even do such a hot job of copying stuff that in fact you could resell. Duh. Not hard to get. But it's the psychology and sociology of it that is so destructive. As indeed, its makers and defenders and "explainers" intended all along.

You fail to realize that without this incredible groundswell of protest, from hundreds of people demonstratively closing their stores all over the place, and thousands of whom joined multiple protest groups, the largest protest since the prim tax revolt, there was no popular pressure on the Lindens. If you imagine that only a few high-end content makers on your fancy-ass continent of Caledon can persuade the Lindens, you're absolutely wrong. You're like Arbatov's Institute flacks for the Kremlin who wrote a memo once to Gorbachev imagining that they created perestroika, without thousands of prisoners, workers, dissidents, samizdat writers, etc. creating the pressure from below.

Everyone knows that revolutions are made by pressure from below, not just a few elite insiders. Their elite petitioning to the powers that be is only made possible by the masses creating the climate for change. On their own, they couldn't cut it.

If you think the Lindens care about elite artists on expensive sims and their complaints, I suggest you look at the prices for open sim. Kalyrra or MarkTwain thought if you spread a bloody-handed texture around a few hundred sims that you can make it look like the masses care. They didn't. They weren't the ones renting the flipped humper bunkers.

But with CopyBot, they did get it. The got it. They understood how it threatened the fabric of the world.

Yes, street cred matters. And you don't have it. You are always a coward, hinting on the forums and pulling back because OMGODZORZ all these people "depend" on you.

Cory is as relevant as ever. The debate that he engaged in still rages in the lab, and still has its defenders.

Ann, if anything, the TOS says that LL will do nothing while third-party operators scrape your data, and they warn you that they themselves are scaping your data, and that's it.

Well, Ann, I don't know about the "business platform". Google scrapes all our data all the time and nobody can do anything about it. Only entities like the EU have been able to mitigate it somewhat.

[Prokofy]

Let the record show on this that Adam was unable to answer any of the questions when confronted.

He made evidently a wrong claim about Eddy Stryker and the dates of his work and the nature of his work, which the public record indicates, but he won't respond.

His boyfriend has been caught in lies again, but he can't come up with a good story to back him.

Instead, he slinks back to sluniverse.com and distracts from his failure to answer any of these questions or points by trying to arch tell his little forums freaks friends that OMG, I should never have posted on Prok's blog, OMG you shoudl never feed the trolls, OMG isn't it stupid blah blah blah.

But there you have it -- Adam refusing to explain the real connection between Eddy and himself, between the different bots, between the projects, and the pathways to LibSL, that he only tactically left during that period, but which of course he kept up with as they are all over his new OpenSim project (LibSL has changed its name to somthing else now due to LL's copyright notice on the term "SL".)

[Desmond Shang]

>>Yes, street cred matters. And you don't have it. You are always a coward, hinting on the forums and pulling back because OMGODZORZ all these people "depend" on you.

Oh that's nonsense Prok. Sometimes I've tried to peacefully note a few bits of public knowledge, but I pull back at some point because gossip is in poor taste, and additionally I have a little bit of tact. I'm not your investigative reporter fact-checker.

As for who had influence regarding the copybot mess, I'd say it was Stroker and others like him that got the point across. Look back at the old chatlogs. It wasn't estate-specific, it was activism by the very 'creator fascists' (your term) that you don't care for much.

Also, I think you missed some of Adam's first post. He said the concertbot was done about July, just up there a ways in comments. Months earlier than copybot. I don't see anyplace where he's made any wrong claims, especially regarding dates. That's what the record is showing here.

Well. I'm around, but don't really know much more than I've already said, so I guess there's only one last thing to say.

Happy New Year, Prok.

[Prokofy]

No, Desmond, I didn't miss dates. Adam is deliberately obfuscating. If Eddy or he worked on it in July, so what? But in fact they deployed it, and Eddy wrote about it publicly on his blog, and Hamlet interviewed him about it, all in December 2006, two weeks after the Copybot scandal and protests broke.

He is refusing to admit that it was Eddy working on both, and that matters. His intervention here was supposed to make us think that he, Adam, was working on the concertbot more exclusively, and he didn't even acknowledge Eddy until I pointed out Eddy's public record explaining his work. Can't you see that?

Neither Adam or Stryker or any of the kiddies liked having to dress 60 avatars individually. Copybot was born out of the need of lazy geeks to bypass that IP protection necessity. That's all. You may not want to see this obvious missing link swining through all their posts; it's pretty obvious to anyone else looking.

Stroker was important in the struggle against Copybot, but frankly, my reporting on it was vital too. The Herald at that time had the largest circulation of any SL blog. The stories I and Pixeleen and others put up were all vital because they informed the public. Adam Zaius, Joshua Nightshade, and other interested parties who helped perpetrate CopyBot try to portray me as a liar and libelous yellow journalist blah blah, but I got the story right. That's why they continue to howl and continue to lie about it to this day.

Adam cynically exploited SL to make his rentals million; he cynically took part in LibSL and boosted all its works; he did nothing to stop or prevent or mitigate CopyBot; he is propagandizing about it to this day; he went on to create a techoncommunist paradise at OpenSim, with no commerce, with a deliberate copyleft and ripping mentality, and the logic has unfolded for all to see.

Um, I can't wait to see your plan for a reverse-engineered Caledon.

[Desmond Shang]

Prok, if you didn't notice, Caledon's not going anywhere. I've looked at opensource grids, I've even had a private grid myself, but honestly they aren't ready. It's not the tech, it's the market side of the equation. If I wanted out-of-alpha proven tech with no economy I'd go over to Activeworlds. But there's no point doing that, for hopefully obvious reasons.

Joshua helped perpetrate copybot!? Huh!? I've never heard of any such thing. We obviously aren't reading the same tabloids.

As for Adam 'cynically exploiting' SL to make his rentals million, that's a real stretch. A cynical exploiter would have cashed out by now. Assuredly no cynical exploiter that was sane would remain on the main grid doing land business after the openspace mess.

See, this is why you have to do 'invesigative reporting' rather than just talk to people - people stop responding when you call them names.

As for intent to create copybot, that's hard to know - why don't you ask Eddie. I bet he would tell you! Though I suspect it was made to be useful, but *released to the public* for bragging rights and epic lulz. That's where all the problems stemmed from.

I don't believe any A-list band would want to walk around decked out in whatever some nimrod could randomly scrounge from the grid. It's all custom made stuff in situations like that. And I really don't see copybot expediting multiple avatar setup all that much. Considering an event creator would need a substantial amount of bespoke custom content for an event client anyway, how hard is it to drag and drop a folder onto however many avatars?