Is it illegal to make a bot and sell it?

Is bot making illegal, and what about selling it?
And if some people use it to illegal stuff would feds be knocking my door in a minute?

Yes, any bot you make you would have to give to me before you can sell it.

Just kidding... you can make a bot and sell it no problems.

depends really.

To use a semi recent example.
Programer x (forgot his name and product name.. lol) Had a very hot cookie stuffer application. His members absolutley killed with ebay and so on..
It was online for 6months to a year, then the feds came and took all electronics related to his membership/software, got access to his offshore servers etc.



So all depends on what your bot does, where your located and what kind of laws your country have.

most likely, no

but no guarantees

Making bots is just programming. Nothing illegal about that.

It would just depend on what your bot does and what its intended uses are. If the bot is designed to do illegal things then absolutely you COULD end up in trouble, but most likely won't unless you become really successful distributing it.

If your bot is designed to do something really useful, but not illegal then you shouldn't have any problems at all, even if someone uses it to do something illegal.

GreyWolf said:

Making bots is just programming. Nothing illegal about that.

It would just depend on what your bot does and what its intended uses are. If the bot is designed to do illegal things then absolutely you COULD end up in trouble, but most likely won't unless you become really successful distributing it.

If your bot is designed to do something really useful, but not illegal then you shouldn't have any problems at all, even if someone uses it to do something illegal.

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Couldn't have said it better myself. However, one thing to point out, if you make something really good (profitable) it will probably be more profitable for you yourself to use it and not sell it.

mline said:

... However, one thing to point out, if you make something really good (profitable) it will probably be more profitable for you yourself to use it and not sell it.

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That is probably the most likely way for a designer to create a good bot. Making something for their personal use to benefit their own promotions.

But once they have createed the bot and find it works really well. Why not distribute it. Unless it is so niche specific that it would damage their own projects, it would be a good way to make additional money. If the bot is good enough, they might make more off selling the bot than they do from the method that led them to create it.

Two sources for making money are better than one.

GreyWolf said:

That is probably the most likely way for a designer to create a good bot. Making something for their personal use to benefit their own promotions.

But once they have createed the bot and find it works really well. Why not distribute it. Unless it is so niche specific that it would damage their own projects, it would be a good way to make additional money. If the bot is good enough, they might make more off selling the bot than they do from the method that led them to create it.

Two sources for making money are better than one.

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It's obviously a choice to make for one's self. Personally when a method is making me a grand a day I'm in no hurry to sell it to anyone else. For instance, this is why Coca-Cola doesn't sell their recipes to to other cola companies. Sure, they'd make a little extra on selling the recipes, but it would have a deleterious effect, over time, on their own "edge" in the market.

The second point that I would make is that there is certainly a difference between ways in which someone may sell something. Private sales to trusted friends and colleagues are one thing. But general sales leave your program, and especially your method, open to ANYONE who might have the money to purchase it. You have no idea what those people may do with the method. There are possibilities that they could be irresponsible with it and quicken its demise (or at least significant changes to the service or its "spam" protections).

It's a personal choice. I'm just saying that there are very significant risks.

mline said:

It's obviously a choice to make for one's self. Personally when a method is making me a grand a day I'm in no hurry to sell it to anyone else. For instance, this is why Coca-Cola doesn't sell their recipes to to other cola companies. Sure, they'd make a little extra on selling the recipes, but it would have a deleterious effect, over time, on their own "edge" in the market.
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Thats why I said, "Unless it is so niche specific it would damage their own projects. Obviously, you wouldn't want to sell something that is going to create competion in your own niche or water down your own method.

But if it is a general tool that would work in many other niches and for many other methods, then selling the tool would be a completely a completely seperate niche and a profitable new method for them.

Like you said it's a personal choice with some very significant risks. But definately worth looking into, and there are a lot of factors that can determine if it's a good idea to sell or not.

GreyWolf said:

Thats why I said, "Unless it is so niche specific it would damage their own projects. Obviously, you wouldn't want to sell something that is going to create competion in your own niche or water down your own method.

But if it is a general tool that would work in many other niches and for many other methods, then selling the tool would be a completely a completely seperate niche and a profitable new method for them.

Like you said it's a personal choice with some very significant risks. But definately worth looking into, and there are a lot of factors that can determine if it's a good idea to sell or not.

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Well, it's not just about niches is my point. Look at what the opening of software sites like uberbots and the like did to myspace advertising. Selling cheap (under a couple hundred dollars) to tons of idiots, over time, begins to degrade the service you're advertising on because any asshole has the ability to do it for $50-$100. It happened to myspace because of that, it happened to yahoo messenger mid-decade due to the same kind of thing. I just think its important to think as more of an advertiser than a software development company.

I'm not saying you can't still make money those places but they became so oversaturated that users began to be far more wary and the services themselves generally started up with the ridiculous, heavy-handed security measures.

Any service you're making great money on you can make more on by simply upping your own volume. That will make you a lot more and bring you far more revenue than selling your program.

It's about the quick buck vs. the long term. People can decide for themselves which is the more clever decision, I just want to make sure anyone who's considering it for the first time has a clear understanding of the pitfalls and an awareness of where not taking the long-view has lead in the past.

If you are going to sell your best plan is to create a web service with a monthly lease or volume based fee. Otherwise you're simply diluting your own advertising power on a particular service (in the long term) with up-front payments (in the short term).

mline said:

...
Any service you're making great money on you can make more on by simply upping your own volume. That will make you a lot more and bring you far more revenue than selling your program.

It's about the quick buck vs. the long term. People can decide for themselves which is the more clever decision, I just want to make sure anyone who's considering it for the first time has a clear understanding of the pitfalls and an awareness of where not taking the long-view has lead in the past.
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Absolutely. And many, many bots and scripts would fall into categories that would make them be more valuable NOT to sell.

But many fall into categories that would. For instance when people first started setting up forums some people had to create the tools to run the forums. If you have a forum for any particular purpose, and you wrote a great forum script. A lot of people were able to sell the best forum scripts, and addons to make them better. Doing so didn't water down the original forums. But it allowed a lot of other people to set up great forums as well. Same thing with e-commerce solutions, blogs, html editors, and thousands of other type scripts. Many script even get used in ways the original author never even dreamed of.

So it is something that a script writer just needs to evaluate. You would hope that by the time someone is technically able to write a worthwhile bot, they are savvy enough to make a good decision about if releasing it would be detrimental to their own project.
(yes, I know that isn't always true)

To the OP. Sorry if we kinda hijacked your thread a little bit.

There's been some pertinent info for you nonetheless.

So what kind of bot are you considering. You don't need to give away farm, but at least enough info that people can help you decide if its worthwhile to market it.

i think the question was....

to be or not to be....!

who's thinking to market the hell out of it?

GreyWolf said:

To the OP. Sorry if we kinda hijacked your thread a little bit.

There's been some pertinent info for you nonetheless.

So what kind of bot are you considering. You don't need to give away farm, but at least enough info that people can help you decide if its worthwhile to market it.

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It's nice that my question aroused discussion.

I haven't planned a bot which I would sell. It was just a general question. Actually I don't know if I should reveal this but I have almost completed a "bot" which is similar to SSM and CPAXtreme, I know I could sell it for $500 or $100 monthly subscription. But because it's kind of fraud, I don't like to sell it cos I don't like scamming advertisers as I'm low level advertiser my self.

As others have just said it really depends on what the bot ultimately does but if you were planning on selling a bot which has been programmed on lets say a free version of Visual Studio.Net which is supposed to be used for educational purposes only or a cracked version of any other compiler then that's illegal.

I know a few guys who actually used to use a "cracked" version of Visual Studio/Visual C++ 6.0 and bought the actual thing prior to selling their own software just to be on the safe side.

If your bot does not hack, or otherwise bypass security on another website (outside of simply automating forms, etc.) there is nothing illegal about it, even if the website owner does not like it.