There was a Linden Lab exploit recently that allowed you to rez an empty box for sale, and sell another box INSIDE of that box as $0L…Â you could purchase unlimited copies of any items you wanted, any permissions. Endless copies, because the glitch would allow the items to stay within the box and would continue selling copies without changing the original creator name or permissions. This is not copybot – this is a Linden Lab glitch that few people in-world knew about. This is called “cloning”, and has been going on since around September of 2006.
For a long time, it was a perfect scam. This was used to gain and sell copies of Starax’s statues, fashion, furniture… anything that was sold from a creator and came packed in a box was clone-able. Only a small group of people knew how this glitch worked, and they were very tight on the instructions on how to do it. This stuff was not being given away – there was profit being made.
Estella Starosti, Ruby Nootan, and Candace Larson (previously Candace Sullivan) are alleged to be the ringleaders of this exploit-utilizing group. They were shown how this worked by a girl who was reselling Last Call merchandise, and Candice went on to rip off people such as Nona Hedges, Niki Ree, Stroker Serpentine, Grim Misfit, and dozens of other creators with long-established stores!
Keep in mind that these chat logs are quite old – they occurred in November in 2006.
Candace Sullivan: hi, i am wondering why i am banned from ur store
Creator: you are banned from our stores because of your association with joane diller (a reseller back in ’06) and you were selling copies of my bar taps which did not have permission to do .. have a nice dayCandace Sullivan: do u know simone stern?? i am really good friends with her..she will tell u..i do not steal shit…i have no idea who or where i bought ur taps
Creator: i don’t get into drama here… i just work and protect what it legally mine
Creator:: i don’t talk to ppl for the most part… i don’t spread rumors
Creator: nothing
Creator:: you need to keep your nose clean and stop this.. you are only hurting yourself… i suggest finding a new line of work if you are too tempted to buy or make or resell things that
Creator: don’t belong to you
Candace Sullivan: oh so resell is the issue lol?
Creator: no
Candace Sullivan: thats ridiculous…i wholesale from simone…ppl that spend thier money have every right to resell it.
Creator: resell things that don’t belong to you.. meaning copies of things you don’t have permission to copy
Candace Sullivan: Your talking about something i hadn’t a clue of…was told and taken down…do u relly think the 20L i marked bar taps at was a big part of what i do??
Candace Sullivan: i never made a copy…was on perms
And more recently, in 2009, Candace was referenced by our informant on copying Sion chickens and reselling them:
[13:05]Â Informant: they both sold me the same damn chicken
[13:06]Â Informant: rarest chicken you can get
[13:06]Â Informant: that is not possib;e
[13:06]Â Informant: unless you duplicate
[13:06]Â (Name Removed, Creator): they are copying chickens?
[13:06]Â Informant: they sold me an astreal chicken
[13:06]Â Informant: candace larsson sold me a male and estella the same but a female
[13:06]Â Informant: when i contacted them, they showed me how it was done
[13:07]Â Informant: i guess in hopes i ould nt repot but se it to sell the chickens
[13:07]Â Informant: but i did report
[13:07]Â Informant: and i showed sion the bug
Now if you don’t understand why the copying and reselling of rare chickens is important… rare chickens go for insane amounts of Lindens, up to $20kL or more a piece, because they have to be “bred”. They are not just rezzed – or weren’t supposed to be until Candace began using this cloning glitch on them. This also applies to Last Call merchandise, which is often resold at a higher value than when it was originally purchased.
The informant also says that these cloning folks have been cashing out of Second Life with their ill-gotten Lindens. What’s worse, is that Candace has been using this cloning exploit since 2006. When her account Candace Sullivan was deleted by the Lindens, the informant claims she moved on to avatar Candace Larson and created another, Candace Larsson, to carry on her cloning business.
Linden Lab began to finally suss out this particular cloning glitch just this month, and pieced together the path to whom was exploiting the glitch and reselling the merchandise. Several accounts are now banned, the exploit has been eliminated, but it begs the question – why did it take three years for them to realize what was going on? It seems LL has a lot of glitch issues that they have yet to discover and eliminate.
Last year, I encountered a second cloning glitch on accident. Not long after I rezzed a no-copy chair, my sim crashed. When my sim came back up, there was my chair — and it was still in my inventory! I was now the proud owner of two non-copyable, transferable items. I was shocked. I immediately reported it to Linden Lab, and it became a known problem, and fixed almost immediately. There was, or is, also a third glitch, where people would rez items on a sim, file a ticket with Linden Lab for a sim rollback and gain more copies that way. Of course, Linden Lab never really looked into a reason for the sim restart, and would willingly do it.
What’s the point in bringing all this up? Well, when Linden Lab has an exploit for three years and is just now getting around to cleaning it up… we have more problems to worry about as creators than just copybot.
"Last year, I encountered a second cloning glitch on accident. Not long after I rezzed a no-copy chair, my sim crashed. When my sim came back up, there was my chair — and it was still in my inventory! I was now the proud owner of two non-copyable, transferable items. I was shocked. I immediately reported it to Linden Lab, and it became a known problem, and fixed almost immediately. There was, or is, also a third glitch, where people would rez items on a sim, file a ticket with Linden Lab for a sim rollback and gain more copies that way. Of course, Linden Lab never really looked into a reason for the sim restart, and would willingly do it."
It's not fixed. I've filed this in the security part of the jira and gotten an official response of it is not going to be fixed. So much for that 10k linden bounty on security flaws.
I had this happen on both my personal land and family land last year. I now have copies of a lot of high linden items that I really have no use for. It's an odd glitch.
So LL never really did fix the exploit that was used to rip Stroker off. Or perhaps someone inside LL simply undoes the fixes quietly right before the new code is rolled out. Clearly LL needs to develop a seriously solid code governance model and system that eliminates any possibilities of "bad things by LL staff" (eliminate any suggestion of malfeasance so they can tell people to stfu with accuracy) while making sure vulnerabilities are required to be fixed before any other code is worked on.
Don't think it's quiet, official response on my jira was "this is known and will not be fixed". This was right after they announced that the bug used to rip Stroker off HAD been fixed. So it's been a super long time.
I had a problem with rezzing on a homestead sim, and after I found out my no copy item wasnt in my inventory I asked for LL to help me out….they did alright but Data Linden himself goofed up and gave me tons of my inventory pull permed items. I later filed a ticket to get it straightened out..but I felt so dirty to even see a full permed item that wasnt supposed to be in my inventory. Do the right thing…buy the items or make it yourself…And if you happen to come across some full permed items that are not supposed to be…throw them out asap!
I mentioned this during the SCD post in May on the copied glasses. I was basically called a liar in so many words. I never told anyone how to do it because I knew that it would be a disaster and I couldn't trust anyone on who they would then tell. I'd hardly say that it was "tight" though.
“why did it take three years for them to realize what was going on?”
tahts dead simple! lookup “Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act” inside Wikipedia.
They get their fair share on bussiness of that kind. Some more business volume. Their cut on xstreets. Their cut on cashing out L$. Everywhere a fence makes profit.
And yes, that might imply an insider job. How comes a company capable of creating most complex software, top of the line virtual worlds, isn’t providing a functional Search Capability for discovering stolen Intellectual Property?
Neither on xstreets – which is a webpage, come one, there should be ready to install solutions for the task available – neither in worlds?
Right know I am asking myself “why did it take three years for me to realize what was going on?”
http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts…
Aside from these exploits, I don’t see a problem in reselling LEGIT transfer “Last Call” outfits for a higher price than the original purchase price. Especially not as long as there is credit given to the original creator.
Other people trade their outfits or even give them away for nothing in return… why, that’s also awesome and I’m very delighted that I had the chance to get a few more outfits I missed during the final sale. Well, whatever, emphasis is on LEGIT products.
if you franchise your products and offer reseller packs, you're just asking for trouble really, makes it so much easier for thieves to hide in the crowd and confusion.
This sucks, sl is dying on pourpose, i dont spend hours making stuff so somebody can just come along copy it and sell it, even if the buyer likes it, they dont know who made it- linden labs could have stopped this a long time ago without removing copybot by instituting the following
Create 2 Separate account types
Resident
Merchant
Resident accounts = can rent land, buy lindens, play the game free as they always have, they can offer items they made for free and sell items inworld and use the profits to finance their lifestyle.
Merchant Accounts = These residents wish to convert lindens to Real Life currency, they must provide at least one of the following, Credit or debit card, verifiable home address, bank account where money will go, phone number, paypal or call in and provide some verification generally accepted in their country of origin. Merchant Accounts must also upgrade to Premium. Therefore cashing out forfeits anonymity
This may be simplistic but I do feel that those who play SL for free now should not be forced to pay because of scammers, those of us who cash out should be able to afford $10.00 per month overhead.
In addition all the merchants should be listed on the website in alphabetical order with a link to their profile.
This may be a horrible idea or a good one its up to the people