407 implimentation

First off, I am VERY disappointed in SL administration about their decision to close the bill of rights vote. A BILL OF RIGHTS IS NOT IMPLIMENTED BY THE PEOPLE, IT IS IMPLIMENTED BY IT'S EFFECT ON ADMINISTRATIVE/GOVERNMENT DECISONS AND LAWS. A Bill of Rights is a set of laws for the lawmakers. FOR THAT REASON I SPECIFICALLY DID NOT PROVIDE IMPLIMENTATION.

Secondly, seeing as that in THIS world the laws of physics can be changed to ensure at least some rights, there are a few things that would indeed facilitate a bill of rights. Firstly, with the freedon of spech and expression it is very useful (though not necessary) to have the ability to truely ignore someone. after all, your right to say it my right not to pay attention right? well, it's admittedly harder to not pay attention when it's staring you right in the face. The first feature that I would propose is one that would allow you to truely ignore someone to the point where for you they are a phantom prim that cannot push, bump, or have physics objects effect you. something who's *objects* cannot reach you on public chat. something which for all intents and purposes is less than a gnat.

The idea is simple. The ignore list for any particular user would be stored server side, and a very quick check vs the UUID list on the server would tell if the person is or is not on the individual's ignore list before sending them avatar information more basic than raw location and their ignore status. This would be resent in the event of an unignore. Both individuals would be ignored to eachother to prevent harassment either way. Then, when the client was to render the user-ignored individual, it would do so as a simple sphere or posibly a particle rather than a mesh with attachments. It would not only save on render time in the case of someone trying to cause attachment based render lag with mutilated torii, but it would also solve the issue of offensive attachments, clothing, or otherwise. if it offends someone they can simply make it go away.

Further, it would be possible to ignore land in a very similar manner. any target plot could be selected to be ignored and would also appear on a list. any prims on that property would not be streamed to the target client. the only things that client would recieve are information about avatars on that plot, and it would still be sent with the ignore flag and render them as ghost particles until they are no longer on the ignored plot. Similarly plots could ignore users via the ban/restrict or even an ignore feature. With restrict the option could be to restrict rendering from all individuals but those on the allowed list, and also block channel 0 chat from being sent/recieved over property lines. Ignored users could not rez new prims on land they were currently restricted from, nor could they compile scripts there, they could be effected only by kick/ban/freeze/sendhome scripts on the land in question (no push scripts), and they would be unable to affect any other individual on the plot with a script in any way. This way we avoid griefers taking advantage of the system. The reason avatar data, clothing would still be sent in the event of plot based ignores would be because avatars on the plot are not truely ignored to eachother and eventually there is the possiblity of needing to render them. With user ignores this is very unlikely that it will be toggled just for short periods, save maybe to reset ghosted individuals.

Second, now that this introduces privatization of property, and the ability to ignore someone more effectively, there comes the issue of what the hell the abuse team would do to waste it's time. NEVER FEAR, there is always the public sandbox to worry about where a user's builds cannot just simply be ignored. in this case griefers could still be called on building offensive things. Also, there would be the issue of what happens when someone circumvents the ignore policies to continue harassment of a user. In this case I would say a very strict hand could be used, such as 2 week hardware+account set bans, and in second offenses they could go strait to an account permaban. Upon review of application for a new account they could be permitted to re-start a different probationary account for the registration fee in effect at the time, and they would then have to be on a probation period where they get monitored randomly by the less busy abuse team. then if they do it again, they get banned permanently and any account discovered to be in use by them gets expunged. Simple task, eh? They could even impliment installation ID's based on 1 per credit card so you could see who logs into who'se accounts, and could crossrefrence with hardware profile information sent to further find out who is really logging in as who, etc.

Of course this still begs the rights of the accused, which are sometimes the most important rights of all, and indeed some of the most desired among those that contacted me about the vote I set up. This would have to be addressed by repealing the current policy on abuse reports being left anonymous. Of course this really only becomes an issue of "is this person circumventing or not" which would be rare, but in which case they could immediately submit proof or evidence or arguments against the accusation, and if the accusor recieves additional harassment, punishment would be advanced to stricter levels upon a guilty verdict. The accused would have the right to know what proof or evidence was used in the decision against him, and have the right to appeal that to commute punishment. For this reason continued harassment would be decidedly rare.

By in large though, the change implimented by a bill of rights is largely a WHO WHAT WHEN WHERE WHY change in punishment by administration. Punishment for system level abuse rather than inter-user abuse, which would then be the responsibility of the individuals or landowners in charge.

Honestly, I'm going to ignore the Bill of Rights statement, because I find it (and the "bill" itself) to be sophomoric. If you would like to have a real discussion on the Terms of Service and their implications, I would suggest addressing the issue with Philip and/or Robin and ask for an open discussion on the matter.

As for "the real right to ignore someone," this is precisely the fallacy of the Main Grid. By smushing everyone together, including competing interests, the result has been a lot of complaints with regards to the system itself.

Now, island sims already promote the right to these freedoms. An island sim is basically a portable 16 acres of virtual land that you can close, move, and edit at will. Unfortunately, it's also very expensive, and the data is never truly yours.


At the end of the day, until Second Life is to the point where a personal sim is affordable and can be owned and maintained remotely, this is one of the freedoms we give up short of buying a personal sim.

If it rubs you the wrong way, I suggest putting your money where your mouth is, by either buying an island or taking your investments elsewhere.

While there is a lot of talk about this "Bill of Rights" thing, what was it intended to do? I can only think of two ways it could work...

A) Limit further what we the players can or can not do.
or
B) Limit what Linden Lab can do.

I know for a fact that B will never happen. Linden Lab is a privately held company. They can not be controlled by their clientele unless they go public and players buy lots of stock.

And A... Why the [explicative deleted] would I want to vote to PUT LIMITS ON MYSELF?


Documents of this proposed nature can not be anything BUT negative. Either they limit what the "people" can do, or they limit what the "government" can do (which includes limiting what the "government" can do to the "people" or to itself).

Full Post


Besides... IT HAS BEEN SHUT DOWN. That's the end of it. You can now talk about it till you are blue in the face, but you might want to apply yourself to something that has some chance of making a difference instead...


Oh, and I'm not dispariging anyone's ideas to make Second Life a better place. By all means bring them up for debate! Change is good. But this whole bill of rights thing is a side tangent that just takes away from the very issues its supporters want addressed.

Uhhh a Bill of Rights is not a feature. They kinda explained it and I agree. There is no coding needed for a Bill of Rights.

A. Second Life is a game where we are free to express ourselves virtually in how we always wanted to be.....If i wanted to have a nazi prison camp and fill it with npc's who scream and moan I can no matter how many negs.

B. Get a life, this is not reality so stop trying to treat what people do like they should be held accountable for having fun.

C. Why do we need rules to govern how we are? Go naked in a mature sim, Heck thats why we got PG and Mature sims!

D. Who needs a bill of rights? The land owners or the free roamers? Justice is blind

The problem is that you CAN'T under the current administrative policy. I know that me and my group almost got banned for having a cactuar from final fantasy because it vaguely RESEMBLED a swastika. We also have had numorous builds removed by administration without warning.

The goal is to make it so that the administration doesn't have any excuse or reason to care about what people build on their land or wear on their person.

The purpose behind the suggestion of these features of ignoring are to allow the individual the ability to solve their own problems in a way that all parties can be accepting of rather than the current policy that causes one party to always be the "loser" in a dispute, and which puts administration on the level of mediating personal conflicts.

This isn't to add restrictions on individual rights, but rather to give them rights and protection from decisions based solely on a narrow opinion of what may or may not be "appropriate," as is the current policy.

You think thats bad? ask some the beta kids about the Tornado Cannon, one of SL's first banned guns....When SL objects were ALWAYS physical.....hehehe always loved shooting someone's house from one sim to next

LL does care, and they do warn ya, some things that are reported by your neighboors they cant tell you who obviously, but try tracking down your group lol

I've only seen issues when things violate the "fly over rule", which is something about seeing questionable objects in plain sight. Which can be avoided by building it inside a building or such. The other was putting mature items on PG land.

Have the objects in question been removed fitted the description above? If not, what was it?

I'm curious =)