A World of Botters

Did you ever wonder why you never manage to win the items you want on eBay at the very last minute? Did you ever notice that some players in World of Warcraft or Farmville manage to build up their character experience much faster than you ever conceived possible? Did you ever feel as if you are playing against a machine in some online poker rooms? Did you ever feel as if your computer is possessed? Welcome to the world of web robots.

The term 'robot' was first used in 1920 by the Czech author Karel Capek in his play entitled Rossum's Universal Robots which dealt with a factory producing artificial people called robots. Etymologically, the word robot literally means 'serf labor'. Surely, Capek never imagined that this word would become a staple theme in science fiction literature and film but even in reality. Robots have completely transformed our lives, from the Mars missions to heavy industry to building cars. Robots are taking over.

But whilst we are still a bit far away from having a domestic robot as advanced as Honda's Asimo or the Bicentennial Man in our homes, the craze of vacuum cleaner robots has hit our shores. Already, without our knowledge, many of us are using robots, or more specifically web robots.

Simply put, web robots or 'bots' are small software programmes which can run automated tasks relating to an internet service or application.

Many of us who like me are addicted to buying useless junk from eBay use bots all the time. Auction-site robots enable you to set your highest bid and do the dirty work for you without having to stare at the auction countdown for hours on end especially when the junk is being sold by a chap in Minnesota which would mean that the auction would probably end at 3am Malta time. They make life easier.

But not all bots are benign or even legal. Bots are the preferred basic ingredient for distributed denial of service (DDOS) attacks. Some bots are so cunning that they manage to find their way into your computer without your knowledge turning your machine into a zombie forming part of a huge farm of compromised machines, also known as bot nets. Such bot nets would then be at the mercy of cyber criminals. The use but even the production, coding and distribution of specialised bots for DDOS attacks is considered a criminal offence under the Computer Misuse provisions contained in our Criminal Code.

Things get more complicated however when, unlike a DDOS scenario which gives rise to criminal sanctions, you would not be sure whether using a bot is allowed or not.

A typical example would be online poker bots. Whilst the Malta Remote Gaming Regulations are silent on the use or legality of bots, many poker sites prohibit their use as they would provide a disproportionate advantage to some players. Some specific clauses contained in their terms and conditions of use stipulate that the use of bots is not allowed and any such use would mean account termination. A new niche software market has also developed around the use of poker bots. More poker operators are turning to specialized bot detection software in order to catch the so called botters. But not all online poker sites take this approach. Some of them openly encourage it yielding good rake results to the operator.

Bots are also very popular in Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGS) such as Blizzard's World of Warcraft even though such use is again prohibited by WOW's terms of use. You will find hundreds of page on the web discussing how to best farm gold and build character experience through the use of bots and more and more players are realising that. Even popular Facebook applications such as Zynga's Farmville has not been immune to the rise of bots irrespective of the fact that such use is clearly against Zynga's terms of use. People just use them in order to automatically plant, sow, seed and do whatever is required quickly on their farm.

What many users do not realise however is that many of these bots would normally also contain some malware script which could have detrimental if not catastrophic effects on their machine as well as jeopardise their own personal information.

Will bots ever take over? Possibly. With the rise of computer processing power, quantum computing and the development of artificial intelligence applications many are those who foresee a very grim future but only few are those who are questioning legal issues such as liability in the use of bots. Personally, I never bothered to read all the terms and conditions applicable to eBay and the use of its auction-robot and I am sure that I will be in for a surprise when my bot will fail me and I will lose my next piece of junk. Luckily so far I managed to shy away from Farmville so will not blame any bot or serf labour for any agricultural disaster.