1.8.0(3) - P2P changes! Huge privacy and landowner rights victory for SL!

Edit: Well, it seems from a poster than 2 things has occured:

1. Blocking teleports to the land does not really block teleports, since "Offer teleport" overrides this. This needs to be reversed before any semblance of Landowner rights or privacy can be established.

2. Someone porting to blocked land gets put on neighboring land - the closest landing point, rather than telehub. Now what in the heck is the point of that?

This is not a compromise! These are not landowner rights!

Please, Linden Lab, make "Block teleport" REALLY MEAN block teleport!




1. YES!!!! BLOCK TELEPORT!! FINALLY!!!

This is a huge victory for landowner rights and privacy in SL! This is a forward-looking change! This win for landowners is something that will enable SL to move into a longer-term perspective of treating land as server space as one might treat a web server.

Further, it's a victory for users who don't want to spend all the money on a full sim, but want some of the same options of privacy and control on and over their land!

2. I would like to see a choice in land options:
A. "Offer Teleport" works as-is
B. "Offer Teleport" uses landing point.

However, since land-owners can block teleports on their land, this is more of a good, useful option, rather than a necessity. I would like to see it happen as well to give more control to landowners, but at the same time, I do appreciate the counter-arguments.

Good news.

I don't see it.

If you didn't want someone to TP to your land before, couldn't you have just set a landing point into a cage somewhere around 700 m high?

This is probably more of a feature for people TPing than land owners, so they don't have to deal with being caged.

Sure, but there's no good reason why anyone should be forced to?:
(a) Go through that effort to have land owner rights.
(b) Have to waste the prims to do that.
(c) Have to be a jerk to people who may not know the land is restricted.
(d) Waste their landing point. (Which is used on land listings, as well.)


You're right about the double-feature.

Yay now they just select the next parcel over and walk the 3 seconds over to your area.

It does nothing for privacy.

If you want to deal with privacy issues, how about limiting moving the camera to your avies line of site only?

This is just the first step in destroying Pinpoint teleporting.

First they will say we got to protect property rights... Then they will say that we have to make sure people land a long distance away, then finally they will say, why have Penpoint teleporting at all and be back to telehubs.

A sinister development in the defeat of rights for the people.

I see through this plan

Hyperbole doesn't prove any point.

Consider:

1. Game developers can prevent people from porting in to advanced areas of a game.
2. Land owners can box in parts of their land and not worry about people porting into their kitchen.
3. Neighbors are just as likely to also ban ports.
4. Landowners with larger plots can better control the flow of users in and out.
5. Perhaps a landowner doesn't mind visitors, but just doesn't want them porting in.


Well, not in all cases, as people should be able to view anything they build / any land they own from any angle and position they'd like, but I'd love that to be an option that landowners could turn on / off.

I think this is silly, considering the whole patch is *adding* pinpoint teleporting features.

If removing them was their goal, they'd just not implement it in the first place.

It still does nothing for privacy. People can still go wherever they want. It just takes them a few seconds longer to get there. Even if I can teleport into anywhere in the sim. I just gotta make a box, sit on it and edit the position, boom i'm there.

It gives the owner of the land more control, yes. But pretending it's a "huge victory for privacy in SL" is just not true at all.

Consider the following.

1. Land owners were up in arms when they discovered the common people would also be able to teleport to any spot on the map. So they put pressure on Lindens to change it.

2. How much land do you really think will be open to teleports? None. Just what the Anti-Pinpoint teleporting group wants.

3. To ensure privacy, the anti-pinpoint teleporting group will say we got to make sure people do not land with-in 500 meters of land that is set for no teleporting.

4. Victory for the Anti-Pinpoint group. Defeat of the people.

So people who currently offer teleports to get to their events will, after 1.8, continue to offer teleports to people because they set their land to not allow direct teleportation?

Or will they create giant walls around everything and laugh at the commoners trying to get in?

Right click, click on create, click on ground. Right click on created box, click "sit here". Right click on box, click edit, grab the red and green sliders and move yourself through the walls.

Have you considered the possibility that some people might find it amusing to see people on boxes sliding through walls?

If people set up cages as their landing points we are gonna see alot of it

While I don't think there will be NO land allowing P2P teleports (at the very least, my land will be likely to remain accessible as long as I hold it), it's no secret that some of the people who hold large amounts of SL land are also opposed to P2P teleporting (in part because of the impact on telehub land). It's entirely possible that huge swaths of land could become P2P-disabled for a number of reasons, ranging from pure spite to a quixotic attempt to make "disabled" the de facto default (by setting it, then selling to people who might not think to change it). Assuming it's not the default already.

Based on what I know of it so far (haven't checked it out yet) it's a largely pointless change. One can simply find a parcel nearby that allows teleports, then set a landmark there for future use. Doing so is probably trivial, but not trivial enough that blocking teleport won't annoy people. Putting silly obstacles in people's paths is an innately unfriendly and unwelcoming act, just like setting ban lines.

And if all the neighbors have disabled it as well, then people will simply stop visiting you. I know I will. If that was your goal, you could have just turned on the ban lines.

Sure it is.

Something like privacy involves so many aspects that there's no way all changes can be made at one time. While all aspects of privacy are not in place, the addition of one part of the whole picture is a reason to celebrate.


1. Yes, this is true. But you're mis-representing the reasoning. You're implying it's some kind of us-vs-them kind of thing, when the bottom line is that any land or server ownership / renting should grant some rights not to have to share. We're not a communist society. No one forces me to share my land, or my web site, or my apartment, or my car.

2. None? How about "absolutely all commercial and club land"? Basically, where people teleport anyway.

3. This is sheer slippery slope, and it's not what will happen. The bottom line is that you can't enforce rules outside of your owned land. A much more reasonable solution would be to have some sort of mutual invisibility of avatars and objects between people allowed to be on the land and visitors who are not allowed.

4. That is ridiculous and divisive. Why don't you inquire what the other side's concerns are, and come up with a reasonable compromise? I've invited people against my suggestions to present reasons why my ideas don't solve everyone's ideas. Can't you come up with something more concrete instead of fears?


Well put. On the other hand, they still will have no control over how many telehubs will be set in the future - which could greatly affect how users use telehubs. So really the landowners still don't have any sort of final influence.

Further, I spoke with Anshe, and even with my suggestions, she was resigned that users would greatly be skipping the telehubs and that her investment was down tens of thousands of US$. (See the SL Herald's article for a good run-down.)

Not that I have too much sympathy - I think P2P was inevitable, as is any feature that mimics the behavior of the regular WWW. Anyone who takes the risk of making money in SL should be aware of the repeatedly stated goals of LL to integrate SL -> Metaverse, and research the ways that SL will have to change. (Like servers being opened to 3rd parties, HTML, etc.)

Plus I told Anshe she should be investing in waterfront land with the new ripple.

Anyway..


I think people visit far too many places to manage bookmarks as such, even with the searching.

Once HTML comes to SL it'll become pointless though, as web links will be integrated into a custom HUD teleporter linked to the search sites, I'm assuming. (I've heard people already developing this.)


It's more than just houses and shops in SL, remember. My personal approach is as someone looking at game design. My own land will be landing-point portable, since I want people visiting my shop. But should I go out and buy land and make a game with "levels" - dang right that tp will be disabled to stop "offer teleport". Instead I'll parcel off a piece of land as an entrance area.

But, there's sort of something I think you and many people miss - the sublime sense of immersion that SL has the potential to have. There's something Neal Stephenson described in Snow Crash that made sense - people popping in places suddenly breaks the allegory of an immersive virtual world. Now, while flying robots and pig-dragons may be accepted, there's something about something popping into existance that the human mind just can't accept - and it makes it all the more apparent that you're on your computer, and not in some world somewhere.

So while there are plenty of practical reasons to have and not have P2P, I think there are also some overlooked subtle reasons why, as well.

From the moment Pinpoint Teleporting became a reality, the Anti-Pinpoint people have done everything in their power to derail it and this is just the latest attempt



I stand by what I said. The Anti-Pinpoint group will get others to buy land and put up huge sectors and sims that are anti-pinpoint teleporting.



Hum. Seems this whole thing of allowing people to set wheather or not they would allow people to port onto their land resulted from a few people putting pressure on the Lindens who thus changed it. I donot see why a similar group of Anti-Pinpoint people could not put pressure on the lindens to put a buffer zone around each no teleport land.



The reasonable compromise is to have people name where on their land visitors can port to, make sure that rules cannot be created that put up buffer zones.

The best rule is to just leave it alone.

Until you drop the "us vs. them" schtick, I'm not going to address any comments in that context. You're the only one I've heard actually classifying two sides to this issue. The rest of us are trying to come up with a solution that fits everyone.


You simply restated your original comments with no additional reasoning. You also neglected to address my key point, namely that there is a difference between rights you have on your land and rights near your land. That difference should be obvious. That's simply not a slippery slope that this situation will go down. Your neighbors rights on their land will always take precedence over your rights on their land.


Compromise to what? Full P2P with no restrictions? This is ridiculous, Magnum. That is not a compromise, so please do not try and shift the center toward your favor and reclassify it as a middle-ground.


That philosophy will not achieve very much in Second Life. Change is necessary, so you'd best try and live with it. Help guide it in your favor rather than stubbornly resist all change.

Look, what are you afraid of? All you do is accuse some non-existant group of tyranny, but you have yet to explain what your needs and concerns are about your ability to go places. Honestly, what doors do you think will be locked to you? Every shop and club is going to have at the very least a landing point, and if you don't like it if your friend chooses to set their land for non-tp, you can take it up with them.

Where else do you port? Honestly, now. To explore, a telehub is just as good as a specific place.

This is a good thing, not a bad thing. Hiro is right, and I think y'all are nuts to argue, and you'd argue with a fencepost.

If I wanted to be able to turn it off on my land (either my home or my shop), I would certainly be very grateful I could!

I don't want to turn it off, so who cares. But if I did, and couldn't, this would be almost like all of a sudden everybody in the entire world were on my friends list. Not exactly like that, but much closer to that than what we have now.

Of course it's a victory for the people. A huge proportion of the people are busily engaging in intimate activities, and would squawk like crazy if they suddenly learned (and I do mean "suddenly learned," as a huge proportion of the people never know what is coming down until it hits them ) that anyone could drop in at any time. Suddenly. Just all of a sudden - materializing there.

Already they know that someone could fly by at any time, or fly next door if they have their ban lines on, so that part's no different. But not just drop in.

(And I assume that turning off P2P does NOT result in ugly red lines around your house, so that is good.)

This is no "victory for the anti-P2P people" by any stretch of the imagination. I would not classify myself in that group, since I was one who could never see from day one (and still can't) why they couldn't have BOTH. Then they could have charged for it (money sink) or limited it to premiums (more premiums) if technically possible. But what the purist anti-P2P people were against was the devaluing of land around telehubs - and the telehubs will no longer exist in the important sense they did before. So it's no victory for them in the SLIGHTEST.

It's hard for me to envision this P2P, since I haven't tried it, but it seems to me that the ability to turn it off on your land (and remember, some people's land is just 512) is a no-brainer, and an inability to turn it off would be clearly invasive of privacy.

Sort of like - right now, irl, the ladies have to knock on your door to offer you their religious pamphlet, but with P2P, they could just appear suddenly in your living room, and you wouldn't have even seen them walking up the street and up your driveway to get there.

coco

SL is a public space where people come to meet other people and be part of a community.
If you want privacy, log off.
I can't wait for the day when I have to click on the map 300 times in search of a place to land my av. Couldn't they just allow the teleport and then move us to the nearest free parcel?

I really don't think it's going to be much of a practical problem, Eggy, even if what you are wanting to do is click randomly on places to explore them.

As for large landowners, it's unlikely they would turn off P2P out of spite, considering most of them are in business on their land, and would be cutting off their own nose to spite their face.

coco

P.S. Eggy, LL is also a public space where people come to meet other people and get their cyber on. And they don't want to do that with the whole community. (Usually.)

Well said, Eggy.

That is one use.

Some come to build, some to make money, some to teach classes.

Putting this kind of definition on SL as a big ole' chat channel is like calling the Internet a chat channel. Of course, we've debated this before.

But the proof is this - your argument requires that each and every person is supposed to come and chat. But clearly, plenty of people come to do other things. Hence, your definition is too narrow.


Or demand it. By your own definition, if SL is a community tool, then the community it serves deserves to make the rules.

But the bottom line, you're begging the question. You're essentially saying, "No privacy is the status quo" without giving any sort of reasoning behind why that is so or why that is the optimal way it should exist.


I think that's a bit reactionary. Worst case, you get sent to a telehub. Like you do now.

In many, and I would say most cases, you'll get exactly where you want to go. I say this because the behavior which drives people to teleport generally is accepted by the landowners to where they teleport. P2P is, for the most part, a good thing.

I would have prefered that they left the hubs, and then upon double clicking anywhere on the world map, you would be presented with a dialogue box asking you whether you would like to P2P, or go to the nearest hub. This would have made everyone concerned happy. Both those of us who detest being funneled through hubs, and the hub land owners who would still have received some traffic.

As far as the money sink goes, I dunno - it's seems like we already have people constantly asserting that newer players and non-creative players are finacially strapped. I think that it would really only hurt them, and not established creators, land dealers, etc.

Some may say, "well then those newer and non-creative players can just use the hubs"; however, upon reading Ben Linden's latest blog entry, it seems that LL's reasoning behind removing the hubs was mainly due to new users proclaiming that they had a hard time with them.

Eggy, surely they must plan on moving us to the nearest open parcel if the one you attempt to go to has P2P disabled?

I think your dialog box idea would be a good idea - maybe consider nesting it in preferences, so people don't have to click an extra box every tp?


Money sinks are not part of P2P on preview.


No, it's not.

It's just as much of a treading on landowner rights if my neighbor is getting people teleporting to my land because he's chosen to not allow P2P. That would be his choice affecting my land.