I personally think that when a botter has multiple accounts, you should strip the botting account dry of all ISK (possibly even leave them negative if they transferred any out you can't reclaim) and any items they could potentially sell, as well as stripping any ISK that was transferred via any method between accounts/characters.
Probably should be more lenient to single-account botters, as they are more likely to just up and leave, but still try to strip any botting related ISK and don't be light on the estimation.

I need to check on this. Can't answer right now.

I agree with this so long as their is a method of recourse for those innocents flagged as botters. Nothing worse than being called a botter because you mine 12 hours a day for your corp/alliance; put in all that work only to be banned without recourse would be fairly unjust. CCP has a fine line to walk here: but I do agree that their initial reaction should be the ban hammer with an option to petition for a second chance.

Please shut up with stealth "my bot runs for 16 hours a day every day for months now - will it be banned"
No human will mine for 3 months every single day for 16 hours a day. LOL... you will oversleep some day in that 3 months or something i presume. And you will few msgs in local in that 3 months, or click wrong every now and then or something.

On the flipside the first thing anyone does is claim innocence.

People are not going to applaud when they think there are 25000 bots in EVE and you banned just less than 2000; they might be appy if there are less than 5000 bots in EVE and you banned almost half of them.

In essence the simplest decision in naming and shaming is just not to have to worry about whether it's legal or not because there's other negatives as well.

The conversation's not over, but that's the conclusion that we've come to as of today.

What the hell is up with you?

Let me put it to you this way:

The only way (ONLY WAY) to make sure someone doesn't get an inappropriate ban is:

NEVER BAN ANYONE AGAIN! EVER!

FOR ANYTHING.

< snip more caps and fervor maddened eyes >

NOTHING IS PERFECT so they do the best they can.

Deal with it.

If you go back and *read* what I wrote - there is no "blind trust in technology", nor is there a Titanic in sight... I said "imperfect system, imperfect people". And the one and only sure way not to get someone "innocent" - is to never ban anyone. That is the only absolute sure way.

But you threw out a couple good straw-men there.

If yes, I would consider it a bot. However, just pulling information (as long as no actions were taken - i.e. - filling orders, making orders or contracts, or accepting orders/contracts) - when it automates player decisions / actions - then it's bannable.

What are you going to have CCP do? Vet every addon that anyone ever comes out with?

Waste of time much?

Could you please provide me with some link validating that CCP sanctions cache scraping?

I'm not quite sure what you're asking for here. It seems to me that you're involved in business ventures which carry with them some risk. In those ventures you're clearly dealing with people you can't trust and if I'm tracking this correctly you're asking me to ensure you that if bad people do things we won't reverse the transactions and I simply won't ever make a blanket statement like that based on potential future scenarios. Everything is dealt with on a case by case basis and every business venture carries risk. CCP does not subsidize that risk for you and it's to you to determine that the isk you're gaining is being gained legally. If you're engaging in markets such as loans which are beyond the intent of our systems by design then that risk is yours.

You could make an argument that CCP should design some form of guaranteed loan system but that wouldn't be my department. Every time you make a transaction outside of the scope of our controlled systems such as the market or contract system you are choosing to accept that risk.

About numbers, every real world organization that fights any kind of crime usually has an estimate of how big the phenomenon is, even if they can't find the exact number for obvious reasons.
I understand that there are many reasons for you not to tell anybody about the estimations you have, but at least there should be a criterion to evaluate your work on a corporate level, at least as a way to decide how many resources must be devoted to security issues.

Also- 14 day bans are kind of a joke- if you manage to angry a community mod/dev on the forums with witty prose or lewd comments, you get a 60 day ban, what gives?

Whats about other accounts from the same person? does they got banned aswell? If not, forget about all I wrote before, then nothing will change.

A other thing is the effect to the economy in eve. I really hate all the bothers out there, but I hope I am wrong with it, after all the years about doing nearly nothing I really can imagine that all the bothers out there makes the market thing a bit more affordable. not sure but with all that items on the market (mining, mission etc) from the botters I think it could have an effect on the markets prices too.

CCP has stated that absusing the report system will have consequences. And there are quite a few ways to tell bot miners from the real ones. And there is no evidence of mass false positive bans. Just alot of whiny botters.

Ok, I will suggest another, less than an incredible idea: remove the ability to sell game time for ISK. I believe that all evil is gone from it.

Maybe I can help you out here Vaerah. When you blow up a Hulk or Mackinaw and you see the pod warping off to the station and then coming back to the same spot their ship was in and "mining" in the pod for the 18 minutes or whatever it takes to fill a Hulk that would seem a pretty infallible method to me.

HTH

Vaerah,
I agree with you and understand that you do not want to see a single innocent person banned. I also get that you are trying to be the voice of reason by not joining the mob with torches and pitchforks. I believe you went off the cliff! I feel that the only possible way to get what you want, CCP could NEVER BAN ANYONE AGAIN! Is that what you are asking for? It seems to me that you want CCP to tell exactly what methodology they are using to determine bots. If they say on the forums, bot programmers would incorporate that info into their programs. Since no one is infallible, I agree that they need to minimize mistakes. However, I am willing to accept 95% accuracy since this is a game and not real life.

Do you mean is there some extra software I can install on my machine (that CCP can check) to see that I was NOT a botter?
Is that what you mean? I see no way to disprove a negative. Is that what you are asking?