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

The fact that LL hasn't changed any rules to ALLOW it, as in implement a means to force landowners to accept free flight over privately owned land, says more than them backing off from something they didn't think all the way through. Them realizing free flight over private land (who's owners condone it) being hindered by what they implemented is nothing more than an "oops.. sorry". That's proof of incompetance, not precedence. What's established is that landowners have positive control of all above their land as high as you can go... period.
Flyers that hate banlines *should* be trying to get any area they can't enter exempt from regular draw distance limitations, with an option to set that independantly and have the border lines appear fully solid. Problem solved.. you don't run into anything you can't see well ahead of time, and nobody elses paid rights are compromised. If that's not good enough than it's IMO obviously a case of "I want... I want", and not much more.

This is true, and I'll accept your corrections on faith rather than research further. Even so, most areas of any significant population density are within ATC, aren't they?



Again it isn't so much any actual breach of privacy, but piece of mind based on the possibility of one. I guess I see the counter to the 'well you are not renting an island' arguement being 'you are still renting a plot of land, and if it was intended there would be common areas, there would be common areas, such as roads, etc. that could be followed.

If LL truely intends air space to be free as you suggested in your earlier post, why do ban lines extend up so high?

It's not all about banlines either. The landowner is freely within their rights to box in their property with mega prims up to and even past the maximum build height, and NOT A SINGLE RULE has been broken.. not even bent. The owner PAYS for the right to that space. Just because people don't build from ground to sky doesn't mean that unused area is a free for all.

In my experience, people who get security orbs already know about ban lines and have bought orbs either because they can't use ban lines or they are trying to use a less offensive means of preventing people from accessing their land without their consent. They learn about these devices by inquiring with other SL residents. The "paranoid" mindset that prompts these people to get a security orb pre-exists the actual purchase and the people who do not inform them about the limitations of such devices as they relate to the the concept of protecting privacy are far more complicit in reinforcing any "brainwashing". If anything, it's the very existence and self promotion of the security orb industry itself (that evil cabal! ) that contributes to any sense of paranoia. It's not like they are going to shoot themselves in the foot by enclosing a notecard disillusioning the purchaser of the notion that the orb protects privacy in the manner which many purchasers believe it does.

A lot of people do not like a plane or copter flying low overhead in real life, and a lot of people do not like it in Second Life, either. I know there were complaints on an island I used to rent on, when a neighbor flew their plane around and over people's houses.

Maybe not a privacy issue, but possibly 'disturbing the peace.'

I think Dana had a good post on the issue. It's nice when people do allow flying overhead (this includes avatar flying) but we shouldn't necessarily angrily expect that we be allowed to. Linden-owned public land, yes if the Lindens say it's okay. But over someone's house? Why should they like that?

At least, not at 100 meters which is a figure I saw in the thread a few pages back.

I've gotten stuck in ban lines too when a hoverboard got out of my control - but I didn't get angry about it. I understood the ban line was not there to stop me but probably due to past bad experiences with griefers or jerks visiting their land - or to avoid such. In other words, *it wasn't personal* so why would I take it that way?

Argent you mention the Lindens nearly acted against public airspace and flying overhead - yet quote it as if it speaks in your favor. Doesn't sound like they are FOR it, just that they didn't quite see a need to act AGAINST it. However ban lines and other security measures ARE acceptable (can't truly compare a corporate run environment to real life - in this case, what the Lindens deem legal IS also what they deem acceptable imo, so it IS the same thing.) So that speaks for itself, I think.

Off at a bit of a tangent here....

WRT griefers. Last time I had a bit of bother - idiot smoke bombing - I set the "pay to enter" on and it worked like a charm . I just set it to pay 1 L$ and would have quickly refunded any bona fide visitors. Didn't think it was worth the bother of ARing and I cancelled the pay to enter after a short while and (so far) they have not come back - but they now know what will happen if they do!

I encountered my first 'pay to enter' parcel just yesterday, coincidentally. That's the first time in over two years in SL that I've come across one. It was a parcel adjacent to one that was in a hunt I was doing, and the only reason I knew it was 'pay to enter' was that it had *green* banlines surrounding it that said 'buy pass'. I wish I'd thought to take a screenshot of it.

I think it's a great idea for highly griefed/passed through areas, actually. If people passing through are being a nuisance about it. Lol.

And anyone who wanted to go through for things like flying would probably be glad to pay the fraction of a cent.

I certainly agree that many people who buy security orbs are already irrationally afraid of intruders before making the purchase. I can somewhat quantify the irrationality by the false alarm rates of the configured devices. In the vast majority of cases, security orbs eject more innocent bystanders, bumblers, and border-crossing-befuddled navigators than they do actual intruders. And it can hardly be otherwise as long as the people they're supposed to be protecting are present for only a small portion of the time the devices are active.

But the problem is deeper than that. The devices (with their default settings) contribute to a hostile and isolating SL environment. And that hostility feeds on itself. The very existence of restricted access creates a sense among the restricted that this isn't a very welcoming place. That's not to say that nobody should ever be restricted from anywhere, but that the more such restrictions there are, the more time they're active, and the more drastic their countermeasures, the more folks feel the need to protect themselves from a largely non-existent threat--*and* the more it fosters the threat itself: It's a hostile environment out there, it must be common to do things to engender that hostility, so... let's grief!

(I also agree with the rest of the post as I understand it, that device makers would do well to warn customers of the inherent limitations of any technology in providing "security" or "privacy" in this environment. Such a disabusing disclosure might well convince some folks of the futility of the whole endeavor.)

Personally, I would not want to use pay to enter as a permanent fixture - after all, you can set up things like a donation box - but as a short term measure to deal with a few silly b's, it worked for me.

If there was a persistent problem with griefing, then what's wrong with saying, "Ok, you can come and grief here, but I'll charge you!" You can set the charge as high as you like.

Deira yes that's what I was saying too.

It wasn't incompetence, it was an clear and explicit balancing of rights. On one of these occasions one group of landowners talked them into increasing ban lines to 100 meters, and they were then talked down to 40 by the fliers. They had to go back and tell the first group, sorry, we can't do what you want.

Most areas of significant population density in SL are bot holes and clubs, and fliers stay the hell away from those lag pits.

It's about something you made up. I'm not going to talk about aircraft and privacy any more because it's a ludicrous idea.

They don't. See previous post.

But most owners won't do that, and pilots would see that as something interesting to fly around anyway... because it would be rare and unusual, because it's something that just can't happen often. If ban lines could go up that high, every sim would have infinite aircraft-destroying pillars everywhere.

They acted against griefers who were not in planes, but just hovering over ban-lined parcels dropping things into them.

I've never paid a penny for paylines, and I never will. I ran into one once that extended into part of a linden road, because of a bad parcel layout, and I consider them as nothing but extortion.

Extending onto public/Linden land, yes it's wrong. But again it's a permission currently allowed on privately-held land.

Real highways do have tolls, although they are a pain and no one likes them.

I'm not advocating pay to cross a parcel for anything other than short term responses to a bad griefing situation as was described.

It was on private land that a Linden Mole had driven the road over.

I got the impression that you considered it somehow less obtrusive than regular ban lines, which would have worked just as well. I was simply expressing my opinion on paywalls in general.

I know.

And yes it does seem a bit better because at least the person has an option.

In a place where the road had no business being in the first place. That's like the RL Gov't deciding to put a road through your property and not even bothering to use eminent domain to claim part of your land as right-of-way, instead requiring you to pay property taxes on a public roadway where you are required to allow the public to pass through and do anything they want, because while you're paying the taxes on the land, it's still not your land.

This is equally as bad as those who are against ban lines who believe that we as property owners should be required to let all avatars enter our land at all times for any reasons whatever. It doesn't fly, and is totally against anything that can even remotely be considered common sense.

Exaggerate much?

What rights Argent? What rights do YOU or anyone else have over privately owned land?

NONE!
The height limit of banlines is NOT the cutoff limit of owner rights, extending from ground level going up, and you meandering travelers get the rest. Makes no difference if banline limit is 1m or 4096m or more. You have no travel rights if not granted by the owner. You have no rights to fly low and view the pretty stuff if not granted by the owner. Prove me wrong if you can. Show me that a scripted device (if it's possible) which scans for AV's and automatically adds that name to the parcel black list ban (effectively negating ALL travel at any height over that parcel) would run afoul of the TOS or CS. You can't.... Arguing for flight access over someone elses land is no different than demanding to park D'load files on *someone elses* FTP server... Isn't going to happen. LL isn't going to give you some golden egg that says you can. You can argue "community" and "open nature" of SL all you want, but you know as well as I do that money talks and LL listens, and the money comes from land owners not travelers. I also would like to see more areas open to travel, and I'm NOT against those who love to cruise around and explore.. I do it a LOT. Honestly though, it's the sense of self-entitlement to space *other* people have payed for that gets under my skin. It's the same scenario, different players.. "you want the view, buy it"... "you want flight access, buy it".

It makes me laugh all this talk of "rights" in SL. You don't really have rights that are unassailable and inherent, you have granted rights at best, granted by LL. If LL chose, they can change the nature of those rights either in your favour or against you at any time they choose and you would have little recourse as long as you were still getting a reasonably comparable service for your tier payments.
LL have done this before and they will do this again.

The ones that Linden Labs provides.
I never said it was. Rights aren't absolute. But I've typed in the "rights aren't absolute" message about three times now and if you haven't understood it yet explaining it another time isn't going to make a difference.

And drop the "self entitlement" nonsense, please. I'm a landowner in SL. It's my rights over my land that are limited too.

I agree with Argent in terms of you having to drop the self entitlement bullshit because that's all it is. If you buy a region or estate then you are renting pretty much total control and rights to a large chunk of land otherwise you are renting certain rights such as the right to build, the right to control what is built and to a certain extent what happens on your parcel but your rights are far from absolute.

The Lindens have explicitly stated (sorry no links handy) that there are effective limitations to what you can do with scripted solutions including the requirement that you have to give people fair notice (I believe it is usually 10 seconds but depending on the size of hte parcel) before ejecting them or sending them home and that devices not giving fair notice can be ARed and the owner disciplined.