Are some people really so stupid as to expect privacy in SL?

People seem to think that those wishing privacy are anti social. Some may be, but a lot just want to be soicial at their convenience and when they feel like it. There is nothing aberrant or wierd about wanting to be alone sometimes, or to selectively socialize with the people you want.

You may be a person who has opened their SL to all who come by, who welcome any unexpected visitor at any time. That's wonderful. But some peole do not choose that path. Why is that so hard for some people to understand and accept. It seems some people's main activity in SL is worrying and wondering what other people are doing and what they are "hiding". They throw out the same tired line.."Get and Alt", or "Move into a skybox". Why should someone have to go through those steps just to avoid meddling busybodies?

"his ass meant".

Dude, I'm filming. Deal with the banlines, it's my land, I bought and pay for the privilege monthly, and have a right to set my own f*cking sets up and not worry some curious nosy person will wander through that rare and perfect 'OMG HOW DID I MAKE THAT FABULOUS COMBO MOVE?" moment.

Those gifts of true SL dance serendipity are like lightning, they strike once when they do. Like snowflakes, no two are alike. In other words, I cant just reshoot because someone walked through my scene right after I did it, and expect it will happen again. Oh, I should add that "Edit" is a four letter word. Something screws up and I have to reshoot the entire song.

Avatars introduce lag, so my filming sessions are not open. My own island isn't an option, and I shouldn't be guilt trip slapped for enjoying secondlife as I see fit on my land, conform to TOS, CS and pay for.

I feel no need to define further, and if some of these anti banline folks can possibly have a moment where they briefly consider what other people are saying before they shoot it down, just maybe they might see there is a reason to have them. I wont hold my breath for it however. I can say this, when I explore and find banlines, I have no problem with it at all. I understand, respect it and leave.

If I wanted a flop house, a free for all, a club or other hang out type space, I'd have made that.

Oh, and P.S. to you international folks in the Global Chat group next to one of my plots... um, just because in your culture it's unheard of for a woman to dance by herself and not need a MAN for whatever reason, doesn't mean that's a global practice. Learn here and now there are also artists, and I'll bet no one asked Michalangelo why he was creating his art without a partner. I also didn't notice Shawn Johnson needing a partner in the Beijing Olympics on the beam when she kicked the whole world's ass and won that gold medal either.

'nuff said.

Knowing this, it's really easy to see why you enjoy an SL with few visual barriers.

I've spent years in city apts where my windows looked directly into a neighbor's windows, perhaps 15 feet or so away. I know why it's always the bathroom window that does this, but in baths with no fans it can be a real issue! That gives you a guttural desire for privacy.

Everyone's SL is different, because we all come to SL with different needs. I feel bad for those who want to live just like in RL, on the ground with privacy, because the platform doesn't yet support it. I feel bad for those who crave open spaces, because privacy seekers will ban and fence and orb their way to having a private SL.

There is a lot of land in SL. However, unless you buy your own sim, you may have to give up on that mainland beach if privacy is very important. An estate rental in a big archipelago might give you the privacy and view, at a little higher price. SL, like RL, is full of compromises.
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That's a question you should ask Linden Lab.

I think the answer is that the lack of privacy is profitable, they wouldn't sell as many private islands if people could create their own little private space in, above, or below their home parcel.

Thanks for the critique of my style. I'll work on it.

All the same, I have to disagree with your point. Terms like 'noob' and 'newbie' have been coined for virtual worlds. At least I never heard either word until I began SL. Furthermore, I only became aware of the different meanings through these forums. 'Stalker' is a well-understood term in RL. To accord it a special meaning in the context of virtual worlds would not only be specious but very irresponsible: really not much better than using the term to add RL weight to a case of griefing.

And I think your distinction between generalised griefing and stalking in the virtual context is unnecessary. A griefer will be just as likely to pick on an individual for specific reasons of dislike, revenge or vindictiveness as drop a megaprim of Mao Tse Tung on a random sim for a laugh.


Thanks for the links, Scylla. I'll read through them all. To tell the truth, I need to settle myself before I follow some of them. From the wording of one or two, I can't be sure I would give them a fair reading.

From the rest of your post, I get the impression that our interests in the issue are not that different although our sympathies are likely in very different places.

I'm not especially concerned with the legal ramifications myself and I certainly don't have a great deal of faith in the legal system. As I said, I'm not even suggesting that the findings of the court would be a vindication of anyone's point of view, either way, on this issue.

I suppose I should have been more explicit and pointed my belief that if someone is being seriously stalked by a dangerous individual threatening their RL, then I would expect them to take at least some steps in RL to deal with the problem. Seeing the matter brought to the attention of the Lindens, the police or before a court would at least show they have serious cause for concern. I would like to see documentation of a court case because it would provide us with something to discuss. There would be an account of both sides of the story, for a start.

Otherwise all we have is anecdotal evidence and, as far as I am concerned, anecdotal evidence is not only unhelpful in a serious discussion of this issue, it is very much the root of the problem.


That would be interesting. Until then I will hold to my belief that there is a world of difference between being annoyed or angered or having your feelings hurt by a griefer and being put at risk in RL through the attentions of a disturbed individual. There are far too many sensitive souls looking for a utopian peace or some kind of solace in virtual life who would perhaps fare better in RL for all its tribulations. If anything, virtual life can be much more difficult and harder to manage from the emotional side of things, which is not to say that it is particularly dangerous. Just hard.

I think residents can be only too ready to compensate for the disturbance by crying wolf, which is harsh of me, I know.

So true.

Particularly when you're sitting on your horse on the beach, camming in to see who made that waterfall display that shows through the atrium windows. About to get booted into orbit, because you're a trespasser, criminal, meddling busybody, and creepy person, and during your pleasant orbit wondering why is it so hard to understand and accept that you are not.

Wow, Mickey.... honest not being sarcastic, just wishing I lived in a neighborhood like yours. Sounds lovely

I probably make cupcakes... lemon, my fav

It would be without Fences, Sable.

I don't normally prize privacy: but if you were my neighbour, I'd start to.

OK, here's the deal. The zinnias are in your yard. Not inside your house. The things some of us are on about, including myself, is not about that.

Think of your RL house. Do you have an open door policy where you will leave all your exterior doors unlocked, windows unblocked or even open, and anybody who chooses to enter your house anytime, day or night, whether you're home or not, is always welcome to do so, no questions asked? No? Of course not.

That's why we have ban lines around our HOMES. People in Second Life do not respect the integrity and privacy of our own homes, even if we have lockable doors that we do lock, they come in anyway. Until such time as this practice is eliminated, you bet I'm going to be all in favor of people pre-emptively banning "everybody" from their properties, even though I'm one of the crowd who doesn't like ban lines.

So how about some of you anti-ban-line people step up to the plate and come up with a real concrete plan to get the people of Second Life to understand that not all buildings are public places just because they want to go there? Respect everybody's privacy rights and the need for ban lines will go away. Fail to do so and you will all be pre-emptively banned from properties where people value the integrity of their own homes, it's that simple.

Go to hell. I've made at least a dozen formal proposals for real privacy mechanisms that would do what ban lines completely and comprehensively fail to do, I've got plenty of jiras in the current system and feature requests in the old ones and long discussions with Lindens in the forums. Don't tell me I haven't done anything

As for the "need for ban lines", I've been in SL almost four years now and I've never once seen a single incident like the ones you're talking about. How often do they really happen? How many actual incidents are you basing your position on? One? Two? Surely not three? I've asked you this before, but you didn't answer then, so I don't expect you to answer now.

But you can NOT say the "anti ban line people" haven't come up with a frigging plan and expect to be taken seriously.

Been in SL two years and it's happened five times to me and my partner. Twice with newbies, three times with older avatars (one of whom decided to hurl homophobic abuse at us when he realised it was two guys cuddling on the couch).

Four times were in houses on the ground, once was in a skybox 500m up where someone flew all around and eventually camsat on a couch upstairs, then walked all the way downstairs to where we were before she, uh, offered her wares.

The sad thing is.. if you put a script in your poseball system to send whoever that has no permission to do so but decides to sit on it to his or her home without warning, you are pretty much breaching the community standards. It's almost like people disrespecting other peoples property have more rights than those who own the property involved.

As long as Linden Labs doesn't implement some better privacy systems, which are better at *preventing* unwarrented invasions, I personally don't have any problems with banlines.
And no, a security orb is not a means to prevent unwanted guests. It kicks in after these guests have already arrived, which is still something different. Banlines at least partially prevent unwanted guests. But a system that creates a "black hole" in the data stream from the server to the client, so not sending any data about a parcel at all would be more ideal. Objects/scripts on such a parcel should not affect residents not allowed to see these objects as well, of course. Otherwise it'd be too easy a griefing feature..

And I emphasize the bit about not sending any data to the client at all, since it only requires an alternative viewer to make the invisible visible if the data is sent to the client anyway.
As a nice side effect, it would reduce lag as well.
Of course, Linden and Tester accounts would be unaffected by these "black hole" settings. They have every right to investigate suspected breaking of the TOS or to investigate sources of server lag.

No you're not.

In fact, if you put a security orb at the end of another landowner's runway that he's already moved 500 meters up in the air because you asked him to, and have it automatically send home any plane that's taking off, and when he starts taking off another direction you buy the parcel there and do it again, you're STILL not doing anything LL will consider wrong.

The bottom line is that it's not against the ToS to be an ass.

Where the hell are you in SL, so I can stay the hell away from there. That kind of behavior is completely outside my experience, even when I happened to be on the same sim as a hermaphrodite sex club.

All of those occasions happened on two ordinary, pretty quiet mainland parcels, and they were out of the blue from people just passing by. They could have happened anywhere. There's nothing around either parcel to indicate anything out of the ordinary.

As I am what most of you would call a "noob" or "newb" or whatever, I have to admit to TPing into other people's property several times already.

It's always been as a result of the property being recently on the market though. You see a plot you like, take a LM then decide to pop back and take another look.

What you don't realise is that in the intervening 2 days someone's moved in, fallen in love, married, and is now merrily raising a family. Things do move quickly in SL!

As an aging hippy, I suppose I was a bit disappointed to see the same old "ownership as identity", "buy your way to happiness", culture being recreated in SL as exists in RL.

While I'm slightly disappointed however, I do agree that it's each person's choice as to how they spend their money and how they choose to protect and/or share that investment.

My issue with some of the posts on this thread is the confusion between protection of property and protection of privacy.

It seems to me that protection of privacy doesn't really correlate as closely these days with protection of property. In fact as a society we seem quite happy to give away the former in order to secure the latter. The old saw "If you've got nothing to hide, what's the problem" seems accepted readily enough to support the introduction of anything from ID cards to CCTV cameras around every corner.

As a result I think that you can secure your property but privacy is pretty much a myth in any real sense..in SL or RL.

That would be quite fun having that happen - it would give me an excuse to do the full freeze-eject-ban-mute routine for the first time!!

Things move quickly, and things move around a lot. Last month, a particular LM may have led to a club, this month it leads to someone's bedroom...

One think you can do is check before you teleport. In inventory, right-click the LM and click 'About Landmark' in the menu that opens up. Give it time to load. The title will be the same as in your inventory, but the About Land section and the picture will match whatever is there now. If 'Flat, grassy mainland - great deal' has become 'Jon and Jan's love nest' you may want to reconsider teleporting.

(You can also click the button to show on map, which will let you see if anyone's there or not.

Thanks Nic, I'll do that next time.

RockandRoll - here's the deal.

I've probably lived in about 50 different homes here, in about 50 different very different locations, among 100s of very different people as neighbors. That used to be my business. And even though it was a business...I considered that an SL home until it sold.

I'm not clueless as to what goes on. There were a few times that I became Unglued because someone was using my bedroom. BUT....

It's not RL. And if you want to avoid spending a few hours of your day getting all freaked out about something that truly should not effect you....you consider the whole scheme of things, and how silly it is to waste your mental energy on something that does NOT harm you in any way. Unless you let it.

I have a very nice home now, that is not for sale....I use it just as any of you use your home. If someone wants to go over there and use every single pose ball and make themselves at home for the day.....that's fine. It does NOT harm me. It does NOT harm my stuff. It might make a newbie's day to hang out there and have fun for a few hours. I've spent the same amounts of money that all of you have in setting up that home.

If I go home, and find someone in the bedroom (and this rarely happens any more, because SL is so spread out now - there are rarely ever any visitors at all) - I stand at the foot of the bed....and ask them if they are having fun. Most will tp out immediately. NO harm done. Unless I become Unglued - then I waste mental energy - my choice. Your choice. If they ignore me and continue on....they get ejected....it only takes a few clicks....DONE. NO harm done. NO wasted mental energy. (I am not the poster child for not wasting mental energy - but I have learned ways NOT to - I'm passing them on).

If they start chatting with me, without getting snotty....I go over the aspects of home ownership in SL and how it all works....a lot of aspects that many of you described above....and maybe they walk away with a clue. Maybe. Maybe not.

We will NEVER get some people to understand Respect. You are WASTING YOUR TIME if you think you can do it here. If you become Unglued over something that is NOT harming you....you wasted your mental energy. This is NOT the same as RL. You have controls in place that make it very simple to solve an inconvenience immediately. You have controls in place to get rid of what you can't deal with it. They only take a few minutes. If you let frustration and anger creep in after that few minutes.....that is YOUR problem, and not someone else's. You have control over that.

The majority of people who set foot on any of my properties were simply there to enjoy the scenery or just out of curiosity to see how a home gets set up....and to see some really cool gadgets and creations by other creators. The majority did not mean harm. The majority are simply admiring what you have done!

They may have walked away with a sense of "wow, SL is an amazing place".....just as I did for many, many months in the beginning....and that kept me coming back. I feel like I have a responsibility to do the same for others, and not put up BARRIERS that prohibit others from experiencing SL....whether they be old or new.

To summarise this thread;

This works IF the new owners have bothered to change the land name and picture. Many either don't bother or don't know how.
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Brenda Connolly faints.

I tend to have that effect on women.

I think it's something about my face. Small children sometimes cry as well.