Banned residents

We know there are “private” sims like Amsterdam: one of the most popular and a sim with stores, clubs, in one word: a town and a “business center”. And we know we can so easily be banned in these "private" sims – no reason is a good reason…no need to explain: if just one member of the group doesn't like a resident, the member can ban the resident.
I think this is absurd. I am not talking of 512 sq.m. parcels for personal use, I am talking of gathering, shopping places with high traffic.
A new policy about banning people in big commercial crowded parcels, new rules to avoid the abuse of the right of banning (i.e. at least 3 members of the group must agree)…
Maybe this could be a good issue for the next upgrade.

Private island owners have the right to ban anyone they wish, end of story.
You can contact them and ask them to undo the ban, but you must respect the fact that they bought and paid for the land, and thus are entitled to ban anyone they wish.

I don't think this will change, either:
1) landowners would revolt if LL tried to strip them of their right to ban anyone they wished from their land.
2) landowners pay LL a lot of money, and may withhold this money if angry at LL.
3) frankly, LL doesn't have the resources to mediate disputes about bans set by residents on their own land. Even if they did, they'd charge for the service, and the person they're most likely to charge is.... the person requesting that they be unbanned.

Put simply, you can request this 'feature' of LL making a rule that at least 3 security staff must agree before someone can be sim banned...... but I don't think it will accomplish anything. You'd be better off talking to the sim admins privately, and/or respecting that pretty much all land in SL is private property upon which you are a guest.

"Private island owners have the right to ban anyone they wish, end of story."
My friend…no offense but…this is the worst way to start (and end) an answer. SL is supposed to be a place for exchanging free opinions, not free blows if someone enters your property…Sorry I live in another world …

SL is also supposed to be a place with rules and regulations, where money can not buy the “right” to do anything you wish. There is a police blotter and an abuse report. I am a guest upon your land, but we both are guests of a community and you can not tell the judge “I shot him cause he was crossing my land” (in my world at least)

My proposal is:
1 - at least 3 security staff must agree before someone can be sim banned
2 – the ban must be justified (just like we do in the abuse report: indecency, harassment etc.)

Btw I am not banned and btw I saw a sim named “Abu-Ghraib – torture in Iraq” and another nazi themed. But landowners pay LL a lot of money, of course…

And what do you do if only one security officer is online when your sim gets bombed?

I've been at some VERY popular locations in SL during grief attacks and found that no officers were online to deal with the situation -- rendering those (often very important) areas unusable for a time. This happened once in June at New Citizen's Plaza so we had to call in a Linden...which took a while.

I'm also confused about who you're talking about here. Sim owner or group officers?

I tend to agree with Angel. No way would I fork out for a sim if I couldn't ban people from it. People can be banned and/or ejected from public areas in RL (clubs, shops, etc.) at the discretion of owner and/or management. I don't see why this should be any different in SL.

The fact is I am told of many aged and polite residents suddenly banned even while shopping in a small jeans store….No reply from the owners. The fact is I see in Am’dam naked underaged bumping and harassing and its ok as long as they are traffic. I am told of only 1 or 2 adult sim’s owners using the “allow access” option, I am told of several residents banned after a (more or less) friendly dispute on the matter.

And yes, you can eject people from clubs and shops IRL but not without a reason and SL is luckily not only clubs and shops. I go to Am’dam or Rome or Dublin (RL) or Serenite or Apollo (SL) and I find a “no entry”. Why? Cause so it is…Maybe the mayor doesn’t like blonde hair

Bombing and grief attacks are an emergency. The immediate ban is logic. All I say is: the banned residents must become acquainted with the ban’s reason. Especially in case the sim owner is a single person. “You banned me. Why?” – “Not your business”: well – this is an abuse. In a civilized community this is an abuse.
Why sould I fill a whole form to report an abuse while for an owner a click is enough?
Why an owner or the one who bans cant be reported for arrogant and arbitrary behavior?

Ah sorry for the delay…I don’t need to jump in posts or elsewhere in virtual realities to satisfy my ego

My suggestion is purchase all the popular sims yourself an set the rules you like.

Landowners pay money to LL under what they consider to be an agreement : they pay money, LL gives them exclusive control of some land. This 'exclusive control' includes the right to manage access to the land however they want without having to justify it to anyone else.
If LL tried to change that rule now, I'm pretty confident that there would be a revolt by landowners who would consider that LL failed to uphold their end of the deal in a major way.

So, I do not think that LL will change the rule.

Like it or not, the rule that landowners determine who has the privilige of being on their land *is* one of the principles of SL.
Ok, there are a few exceptions to this... such as the fact that I would expect Lindens cannot be banned from land, and no resident can allow someone banned at a higher level to be on their land (e.g. parcel owners can't override an estate ban, estate owners can't override a ban from SL, a highly valued guest in SL still can't access SL if they're inprisoned IRL without access to a computer... etc)
But, generally, the principle is that land owners can manage access to their land however they please and are under no obligation whatsoever to explain or justify this to people who want to go there.

That's the negative side.

The positive side is that landowners have a vested interest in making their land public, because they pay a lot of money for it and keeping it private means it gets used less.

Landowners have incentives to make their land public.... but ultimately they have a right to ban anyone they wish (except perhaps Lindens and RL police officers conducting searches).

You make the analogy that "I can't just shoot people who tresspass on my land IRL".
This is true, and carries over into SL : I don't think you can orbit people, even on your own land, and expect to get away with it.
However, IRL, you DO have a right to lock up your house so people can't go into it without your permission. You also have the right to hire a bouncer or security staff to keep certain people out (bars do this all the time!).

The case is less like "I don't think landowners should be able to shoot anyone who ventures onto their property" <--- which is upheld by RL law, and more like "I don't think landowners should have the right to keep people OFF their property" <--- which is the complete opposite of the law in RL and much of the culture in SL.

Put simply : I think you're making too big a deal of this. They paid for the land, they own it. You're their guest... you don't have any right whatsoever to be there. To repeat this point : you have NO right of access to other peoples' land in SL. Your ability to be there at all is a privlige given to your by the landowner - treat it as such. Landowners have no obligation whatsoever to give you this privilige... they can withdraw it at any time and for any reason including none, and if they do have a reason they do not have to tell you or anyone else.

I know this sounds harsh, maybe even mean, but it's the truth. Their land is their property and they have the right to allow/deny people using it as they see fit without any obligation to explain or justify this to anyone else.
Yes, this is very negative and sounds really bad - but it's absolutely essential to have a working SL.

Requiring bans to be approved by more than the person setting them would be slow, tedious, insecure and a general pain in the ass. Most bans that I've seen set in SL are set for good reasons. I think limiting the ability for landowners to set bans on the land they have bought and paid for is usually unfair. I can think of some cases where it would be fair - where landowners are using bans to grief, for example... but those cases are very, very rare. Usually, a landowner is simply saying "I don't want this person on my land"... and ultimately, they have a right to demand that be enforced, given that they bought and paid for the land.

The issue of banning on private sims is very different from the issue of mainland banning, in any case. On the mainland, bans restrict one's freedom of movement between other places (as well as being nasty on vehicles and just plain ugly.) On private islands... well, you don't notice unless you try to go there and can't.

If at some point the grid becomes *all* private sims (or the majority, where practically everything worth seeing is on private sims) and there are only a few landowners, there would definitely be an issue, but that's not true at the moment. You know, even if one were to be banned from Caledon, one would be able to live a tolerable Second Life, though clearly a much emptier and less colourful one.

I can see both sides of this discussion and it's points and I think that I can shed a little light on the subject.

The original poster is upset because for doing nothing they can be banned at the whim of an estate manager (not the owner or in the case of group land, the group owner, they mean one of the underlings) who decides for whatever reason, "I'm going to ban every 7th person I see."
And they can do so at no cost to themselves. No punishment, no reprieve, they are immune to abuse reports filed to LL because of it (to an extent).

Yes, group owners/estate owners, the people paying for the land can do this too, but they are less likely to do so and will probably listen when someone asks to be unbanned. It's not in there interest to ban people and know it (more bans = less traffic).

The idea of needing a concensus of 3 people to ban is a good idea in theory, but if there are not three people online at the same time there is an issue.

There really isn's a solution to this. If the estate owner doesn't care you can't get yourself unbanned and probably won't care about the fact that they have a rogue manager.
And if it was the owner that did it? Well, then guess what? Tell everyone you know to tell everyone they know that that location/sim is to never to be traveled to. The sim will lose business and traffic and you'll have your revenge.

Um.. one problem with the "Three Security People needed to ban" idea.

What if the sim is owned and run by only one person?
I'm planning on getting a sim in a few months and will probably be the only one running things there. If this idea of yours were put in place, it would mean that I can't ban ANYONE from my sim, no matter how badly they behave, how much they grief my friends and I.

The other problem is that it would be useless. To get around this restriction, the first thing that comes to mind is to just make two more alts and set them up as the other two people needed, thus making the point moot.

Your analogy of shooting people on your land doesn't hold up. Not one iota. You cannot kill or injure people in SL.
A better analogy would be a building that you need a key to get into. Everyone gets one by default, but you, as the property owner... and I repeat owner... can take it away from them if they misbehave... scratch that... you can take it away for whatever reason you want.

Is it fair to the people banned? Maybe not in all cases. But if you take away the ability to ban people, or restrict it and make it more difficult, it will be unfair to the people actually spending money to use the product (Second Life), and that's just bad business.
ESPECIALLY after they have entered into an agreement that states that they have the power to do this.

You'd be the OWNER and not bound by the restriction of 3 MANAGERS.

That's not what he said in the posts.

If there's no group, then the PERSON is obviously exempt, no?

Not obviously, or I wouldn't have asked, would I?

I was asking, basically, whether a single island owner would be exempt from this ruling, as it wasn't addressed in the initial post.

Why so combative? I was just asking a question and stating an opinion?

I think it's a combination of "I thought it was clearly stated at least once" and "no body is listening to anyone else and BRINGING UP THE SAME COUNTER POINTS over and over" (read the thread, it goes back and forth a lot).

Just want to clarify Serenite doesn't ban anyone on a whim. The single person currently on the ban list is not you and is there from over a year ago and got there for shooting me repeatedly with an automatic weapon as I was working. (Guess he didn’t look to see who the land owner was first before pulling the trigger.)

There are other islands now using similar names to mine with a similar looks and feel to them, please be sure you use the correct full name as Serenite is a visitor haven and I'd hate for any confusion.

oh and FYI, This mayor has no problem with blonds, lol.

Well first of all my apologies for my english…its not my native language so nouances slip away.

Its all in its simplicity:

1 – owner(s), security staff, members with the right to ban…all these authorized persons obviously can “lock the door” and keep residents off the land. This is not the point.

2 – The point is entirely ETHICAL. It involves a way of (not only second) life. An owner is first of all a resident, just like the newbie on the camping chair. The fact he pays LL means only he is a paying resident . One pays his/her 5 dollars monthly fee, another pays the rent for his/her shop, but money must not and can not discriminate in behavior and social relations matters.

3 – An owner (and whoever has the right to ban) must be responsible for his/her actions before the collectivity, because SL is not a gorean sim. I don’t want to hear things like “he can do anything he wishes” – this is simply impossible and unacceptable to my democratic culture.

4 – So once again: the one who bans a resident takes the keyboard and writes to the banned resident grounds and reasons (i.e. “you are taller than me” . The banned resident has the right to fill an abuse report (i.e. “no, I ve got my cut-and-paste and my pic shows I am not taller than you”).
If the one who bans is the sim owner, well now he is free to bay to the moon his rage. If the one who bans works in the security or is an officer or an authorized member, he/she can temporarily ban the resident (keyboard required anyway) and then submit the question to his/her superiors’ judgement.

Thank you all for reading this post and, of course, for criticism and suggestions.

P.S. Sorry Keith…I wrote “Serenite” so to speak of course. Btw congratulations for your wonderful land!

Oh wow so my Island's name has become the ‘John Doe’ of SL islands, how cool is that!

I can agree some shop owners can get a little ban happy, most effected choose to vote with their wallets and not patronize there, and also tell 1000 of their closest SL friends in the process. Frankly for me it’s not worth the bad publicity to ban someone just because they rubbed me the wrong way. They would truly have to be a griefer to earn it.

I disagree. This is a business. Membership has its privileges. It is NOT real life, it is NOT society. It is incumbent on the company to take care of all its customers, but it is also good business practice to take care of those that actually pay the bills for you. As a business owner, why the hell shouldn't I take better care of the guy who pays me hundreds or thousands of dollars a month than the guy who gives me 10?



When did SL become a democracy? Do we get to vote on who Linden Lab employs? Do we get to vote for who runs it if we get sick of Philip? Nobody told me about this!
Owners and those they see fit to have ban power have no responsibility to anyone, other than to abide by the rules set out already by Linden Labs and to pay their bill every month. That's it. This isn't a country, it's not a democracy and it's not a culture. It's a virtual reality platform run by a company. That company wants to make money, just like the rest of us. They have no responsibility to be altruistic or charitable.



No. If the person is authorized, or given the power to ban someone by the owner of the sim, it should be taken as a given that the person's judgement is good enough. Else they wouldn't have been given the permission.
You can file an abuse report with the sim owner if you'd like, and I'm sure they will take it seriously enough that they'll ask the person that banned what the deal is, but to bring Linden Labs in and try to make this a grid-wide rule, to change the agreement people already have with this company to take away what little power they have to protect their property? That's just wrong, I'm sorry.

As a business owner you should know:
Treat your customers like they gave you L$100,000 and they just might.
Treat your customers like they gave you ONLY L$10 and they'll never give you another.

wow.. i dont even know what this guys problem is.. To be honest its the owners place.. and if they decide they dont want you there, there are alot of other sims in sl.. just go somwhere else.. its not hard.. its pretty easy infact..

but then again.. i can see why they baned him.

I think this depends on how you treat customers who gave you ONLY L$10.
If you treat them well, then they'll keep buying from you, even though you're still treating them like they gave you only L$10. Just because someone has a low financial value to you doesn't mean you treat them poorly.
Well, maybe it does for some people.... but is it really a good thing if someone starts thinking "I will treat these people badly because I can get away with it?". I'd suggest that no, it isn't.... and that actually how you treat people who you have power over but whom have no power over you is one of the great hallmarks of what sort of person you are. I find that nice people will be nice even if there's nothing in it for them beyond the joy they get from being nice to other people.

I think the point here is that support is not free - it is a paid service. Usually, some measure of support is part of the price of the products we buy. When we buy a cheap product, we buy little support. When we buy an expensive product, we buy more support.

Therefore, you can argue that it's ok to give people who spend L$10 on your stuff 'average' support, and people who spend L$100,000 'great' support. This doesn't mean that you're being unfair to them, or treating them badly. You're just giving them support which is decent, of an acceptable standard given how much they have paid for.

The fact is, there is a market for support : you pay more, you get more. If there was no such market... then we wouldn't have the ability to do things like choose the length of warranty on new computers we buy. Support is a commodity, albiet not a physical one.

Draco, that's a lovely theory. All sunshine and roses. Wonderful.

However, in practice, it's ridiculous. I'm sorry, but you just can't do that in the real world.

True, but I wasn't talking about support, I was talking about general attitude.
"As a business owner, why the hell shouldn't I take better care of the guy who pays me hundreds or thousands of dollars a month than the guy who gives me 10?"
That kind of statement says to me that if I buy a L$10 product s/he basically won't speak to me, "Pfft, you paid me L$10, that's HARDLY worth my time, now excuse me while I talk to the guy who paid me L$10,000." If that happened, not only would I leave, I'd tell everyone I know to never shop there for anything--even if they sell the L$10,000 unique new gadget of SL. The guy's an ass to the people who bougt something else he had that was cheap and he didn't care that the person was having issues with it (script broken, confusing to use, whatever).

Yes, the more someone pays for an item, the better SUPPORT you can give, but it's no excuse to be an ass.

Wow! Thanks for rewriting what I said. I really appreciate having my words twisted.

If you look back at what I ACTUALLY said, instead of taking it out of context:



Note where I said "It is incumbent on the company to take care of ALL its customers" (emphasis mine)
I never said anything remotely like "Pfft, you paid me L$10, that's HARDLY worth my time, now excuse me while I talk to the guy who paid me L$10,000."
If you actually read what I said, instead of skimming to find things that you can use to twist my words, I said "take BETTER care" (again, emphasis mine). I have never, nor would I ever say that a business owner should ignore ANY of their customers. I repeat, I have never said this. It seems that you'd like to think I have, but what you want and what is truth are two distinctly seperate things.

So, I ask you. Do you think that people that spend extra money and show loyalty and support to your company don't deserve a little extra consideration from you? Do you think that someone who walks in off the street and drops $10 deserves exactly equal treatment as the guy who consistantly pays you hundreds or thousands of dollars a month? Do you truly think that?

As I said before, I'm not talking about completely disregarding the $10 customer, but you seem to be saying that they deserve the same treatment as someone who has invested a lot of time and money into you.
I'm sorry, that's just wrong.