By Prokofy Neva, Virtualtor
From Casper Warden's inworld avatar profile.
Linden Lab acquires CasperTech in Second Life
— Second Life (@SecondLife) September 14, 2022
Learn More: https://t.co/ng3Arxyk4m#LindenLab #CasperTech #SecondLife #VirtualWorld #Metaverse pic.twitter.com/bx8lKMY4Xd
So this is actually a very old interview from 2015 (apparently November 17, 2015) with Casper, owner of the CasperTech vendor systems which has just been acquired by Linden Lab. And as far as I recall, it came AFTER Casper put me in all his teleporters in his "sample ban list" (which I wasn't aware of at the time). Somehow I failed to publish it all this time, not through any fear of reprisal, as that actually had occurred BEFORE as far as I reconstructed at the time, although I can't be sure. That is, Casper is capable of banning someone in SL from ALL purchases from his vendor, and that's why I bother with challenging him, for the sake of the nature of the Metaverse we all get. I think it's relevant to the current debate about this latest GOMing by Linden Lab.
Dear Casper,
I have two questions about your rentals system.
The first is whether the system can be set up so that a bank of rental boxes or meters can be placed in one even small location, and refund of one won't issue a call that will refund all the others, too, i.e. are they on separate channels or can they can be configured so the script does not act upon the other boxes?
No doubt that issue is solved by being web based but it sounds like there's an option for old-fashioned inworld-based terminals as well. But I have a much more important question.
The reason I don't like web based third-party rental systems is because they give the owner of that system ENORMOUS amounts of customer information and economic information about Second Life business people -- essentially everything that used to be public knowledge before the Lindens began hiding it, i.e. number of avatars who pay more than $1 per month or $5000 per month, etc.
If all the major stores and vendors and rentals agents pipe all their transaction information into your web site, it's easy for you at the back end to harvest it all.
Then you know which stores or rentals agencies are doing well and which poorly; what the revenue is of each one; even their customer lists and granularity right down to the products that sell or don't sell. You can harvest all this not only to make economic decisions to position yourself above others in the controlled virtual market of SL; you can exploit it even more directly, for example, if you saw that the rental trends were trending toward "4096 beachfront" or "2560 snow" or "homesteads only, no private islands" or "this mesh hat not that sculpty hat" you could invest in those areas on your alts.
The other thing you'd be in a position to do is sabotage any competitors, make preferred groups of customers, etc.
I don't mean the problem of spamming with customer lists. That's crude and I don't see any evidence you do that. I mean the harvesting of customer information that other people obtain through their hard work and connections and business expense, that you can harvest merely by switching on an automated scripted object to your website. You would have more power than the Lindens, as they aren't efficient and don't have a system that runs as well as yours does especially on the Mainland.
Now, you can dismiss this question as paranoia or the obsessions of an infamous SL crank, but they aren't trivial. Some of this behavior I describe I have seen exactly in Hippo Rentals which is why I have never used them and other companies no longer in business like Gigas.
The answer can't be "I don't look at the customer and transaction information of all my clients using my products because I don't have time for that/it's not practical/it's not interesting/who needs to know about your crappy rentals/vendors."
The answer I'd expect is "Yes, that's a problem, but that's why...customers can encrypt their data on my system (not likely). Or "Yes, I can see your concerns there, that is a lot of power over a toy world and game economy, but you see, I don't misuse it and my customer base only grows. The hedges again my misuse of this power and information are.... (and here you name the hedges -- and PS, "Prokofy's Blog" can't be one of the answers, but should be.
Prokofy Neva
Owner
Ravenglass Rentals
Hi Prokofy
Thank you for your notecard. You have asked some very good questions, and ones which I believe anyone
should ask before they make an investment - not just of money, but of information.
One problem I face with answering you, however, is that you seem to have clearly dictated what you want
the answer to be, and what the answer "can't be". I don't believe this permits room for an open,
honest and pragmatic answer, and so - with respect - I will be disregarding this.
The answer to your first question is "Yes". The rental units and boxes operate independently of each other,
the channel is randomly chosen when the rental unit is touched.
Now to move on to the issue of privacy and integrity.
Firstly, and for the record, we don't perform any analysis of the information we hold, with the exception of:
- The statistics tools made available to merchants as part of the service, and..
- A monthly, normalised metric which aims to monitor the performance of Second Life as a whole,
made publicly available at https://caspervend.casperdns.com/economy.php. [This link no longer works, if it ever did, and is not archived at the Wayback Machine]. [Now this link appears to work, perhaps because I reported it not working. I don't see that it really shows you that the economy is improving; it shows you that prices are higher, and that's related to higher cashout costs and higher tier costs. That is, it's like computers: 50 years ago, no household had to spend what amounted to the cost of a used car or some other big purchase ($1500-2000) on a communication and entertainment device; today, that cost is folded into every family budget. So people spend more now on mesh heads and bodies, and perhaps then those merchants make more money but they face increased costs. Economies are not only made up of what merchants; you have to look at the consumer basket, government subsidies, etc.]
Of course, I know that this isn't what you want to hear - you have no reason to believe me. So, I suppose the
question becomes a matter of risk assessment.
There is, naturally, a risk/benefit trade-off which always applies whenever you engage a third party service
provider. When I am evaluating a new platform in which to invest my information, I generally ask myself..
- How valuable is the information I'm giving them?
- How could the information be misused?
- What are they selling? Am *I* the product?
- Are they affiliated with any competitors of mine?
- Is there a conflict of interest?
- What recourse do I have in the event of a worst-case scenario?
The very fact that you sent me this notecard implies that you believe there is a risk to your business.
Does the potential risk outweigh the potential benefit that you would receive from the services we provide?
If so, then in your case, perhaps you should consider developing a solution in-house.
However, I would suggest that the information perhaps isn't as valuable as you believe. For a start, actually analysing
the data to achieve a competitive edge is a gargantuan task. I would need to profile each and every product
by each and every merchant using my system. I have no data on market sectors, promotion, product development,
customer opinion, etc., all of which would be pretty important for any meaningful analysis.
If I can see, for example, that your rental business is performing 20% better than company X. Or 10% worse than
company Y. Does this allow me to launch my own rental business and actually compete with you? No, not at all.
There are so many other factors involved, I don't believe this is realistic.
You're right that I could analyse market trends and "invest" in those areas. But investment alone does not make a
successful product - ESPECIALLY not in Second Life. Knowing what market sectors are popular may be beneficial, but
it's hardly a deal breaker.
Regarding harvesting customer information - having the name of a customer doesn't immediately give me a rapport
with that person, any any attempt to market to them would be blatant. The truth is, MY OWN customers hold the most
commercial value to my business. My products are targeted at creative minds, entrepreneurs, merchants, designers,
artists. Thinkers. Who could ask for a more ideal client base?
That's not to say that the information I hold couldn't be abused. Of course it could. Which is why I actively encourage
you to make your own risk assessment based on the information available.
Some factors which may be worth considering - we are a real company, CasperTech Ltd registered in the UK, and are accountable in the real world for our actions regarding data privacy. We have an excellent track record, with tens of thousands of loyal customers.
Thanks for getting in touch, and please let me know if you have any further questions.
It's certainly refreshing to see somebody who considers such issues seriously. "It's not paranoia if they really are out to get you." ;)
~Casper
P.S I would personally be interested to hear how Hippo were able to abuse the information they hold, as you claim. It seems to me that it didn't do them much good commercially.
As for Hippo, they had numerous scripts inside their rental boxes, which engendered a lot of mistrust that they were piping more data than they needed to be, including proximity data. Hippo was also in the land buying and renting business himself, which made it questionable as to whether he could use information to compete with his own customers.
When he was first starting out, he rented a stall from me at Ravenglass Hall on the docks. And he was a fellow land owner in Brown as I recall. And one day while searching my own listings, I saw that he ran a search ad that spouted "Raise the rent at Ravenglass with one click!". Now what the HELL was that all about? He was not just using my business name, which he already got some advantage of by being in search on my land; he was implying that I regularly hiked the rent with a flick of a switch -- which I never did. Why give MY business as an example? I mean, who DOES that? That was among a number of exposures I had to the nature of Hippo, who was universally despised for various reasons, and who was essentially put out of business by Casper who obviously studies markets THAT much.
I will write another post about what I think of Linden Lab's acquisition here. But I gathered from this conversation and other hearsay that for him, SL was small potatoes compared to his other web business(es) and that it was maybe even run at a loss, as a "proof of concept" or to "get in the door of the Metaverse early" or something like that. And here we all are.
It's curious Casper has nothing about this acquisition on his web page, nor does the UK company register have anything. Could this announcement have been hurried? Is something in the LL software going to change that will disrupt Casper and the Lindens thought the best way out of this problem was to buy the company?
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