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

I think the a big part of the privacy thing could be fixed with an efficient ban system in the *about land* section.

If that could ban by account and not av it would give the user ban control over alts of a banned person. Users wouldn't have to see the list of alts, that could be kept private on SL's side. Could be good for groups too.

Not even LL knows what alts people have. In SL the account is a single av, if you have more avs, then you have multiple accounts and there is not nothing that links them necessarily.

LL would have to a total policy reversion for this to work though. Since 06/06/06, and before then for anyone who really wanted to, users have not been asked to, or really been able to, link up their alts and mains and besides the fact that very few people would voluntarily even if LL somehow gave an incentive to do so (unlikely) there would be no way to automatically link up multiple accounts to one person with shared ip';s and all.

Wow, that's a blow out that they don't know, I don't know much about how it all works, but would it be hard to collect up all log ons from ip or isp which ever it is? Or a script built for people to use on parcels that did that but kept it priv somehow?

IP addresses can lead to false positives in a lot of cases. LL could profile behaviours from data collected about an avatars habits and determine an alt but it would still be based on likelihood and percentages and therefore error prone also. Short answer, there is no guaranteed way of linking alts.

Right, it's a shame, I'm not interested in knowing what the alts are, I just think that ban tool is totally useless when an alt can just come in instead.

I've seen a thing called alt abuse in the blotter, I kind of always figured that was what it was.

In some cases LL will connect obvious behaviours when chat logs, IMs and money trails lead them to believe that an avatar is an alt of a banned person. This is what I meant by profiling, but it would be a time intensive operation and only worth it for big nusiance/criminal cases.

Yeh, it sounds kinda futile as an ask on a change to the viewer, at least I get it now, thanks guys.

I know from discussions on the SLED list that a lot of educators use a single computer to register multiple students (up to 5, I think, per computer?) on to SL . . . so there, five different people might have avis created on a single IP.

Can't you disguise your IP too?

@Ian, yvwm

Yes, it can be, spoofed is the right word.

Odd you mention the police blotter. It actually used to have a lot more information although I'm not sure anyone else on this thread besides Argent remembers when it actually gave enough information to find what actually happened in a given incident and who the perp was.

But what about banlines?

Saying "Banlines shouldn't be allowed because I can't drive my car/bike/plane/dirigible through them" is the very essence of self-entitlement!
It's saying "You should be inconvenienced on your land, not me"
It's saying "I don't care if you pay for it, I should be able to access it."
It's saying "My wishes are more important than your rights"

You say "...and to a certain extent what happens on your parcel but your rights are far from absolute."
One of those rights that IS absolute, for now, is the right to allow access. The "I want to fly my plane low over your house, so you shouldn't be allowed banlines" camp are demanding that that right be taken away.

I take back what I said about lifting banlines. My land was very badly griefed this evening and some people (about 5 in all) left 514 prims or objects on my piece of sl.
I will spend the next few days erecting banlines and banning everyone from my private places except my partner.
Whoever you are, it was just too coincidental that griefing took place after my stand against banlines.
Thanks. It really is what I should have expected. My poor old partner was really upset. There is a word for people who do this sort of thing and "griefer" isnt it.

This.

Why should it be that one landowner is less important than another, anyway? It's the RL equivalent of saying that the rich deserve more. Who's to say one resident is more important than another, as far as that goes.

I can't have privacy or my own land settings unless I buy an island? Sorry for just now seeing that post but Argent that one is really lacking. So what if people own land 'on the mainland' - it can still constitute up to an entire sim. People on the mainland still pay, they didn't sneak into the buffet.

(Argent), you've gone way out on a limb there just to insist that your way should be the way everyone follows, just because you want it to be, basically. It is hard to swallow when any one person wants to set a rule not that benefits all but benefits only themselves.

Why not, as I and others have said, petition for official airspace instead? But watch those surrounding land values drop. No one wants to live near an airport, in RL or in SL.

And again it isn't only about privacy but about being annoyed, too. Not everyone likes being buzzed by planes or copters.

Ugh. Jig, I can understand your reaction COMPLETELY. And I'm not saying you shouldn't . . .

I just hate hate hate to see someone lose their optimism and openness because some moron took advantage.

I have so much to do in real that clearing up a mess in sl is too much bother. People are right - this place doesnt want freedoms and independent thinking. It's justa jazzed-up playschool that eliminates any real interest in new worlds and technology by grinding it down.

Jig, just hit auto return and get an orb. Done.

'nuff said.

Have you considered that this is exactly the reaction somebody was hoping for? I mean what better than a spot of griefing to "prove" to you that you need banlines? I am sorry this happened to you Jig, you don't deserve to be the victim of this type of abuse regardless of what you write here. I hope you AR'd the object owner.

There's already enough difference between renting a parcel and renting a private estate.
1) An estate owner rents more land!
2) An estate owner pays less tier per square meter!
3) An estate owner gets way more control over landscaping
4) An estate owner has control over leading maturity controls (there's a difference to setting a parcel to mature and setting a whole SIM to mature)
5) An estate owner gains control over bonus prims etc.
6) An estate owner can kick land owners from his sim (one of two most fraud-sensitive powers currently in game, and it seems to be on the rise again)
7) An estate owner has a tract of land that can be made harder to reach than a normal mainland parcel.

The little rights people have on their mainland parcel do not need to be reduced any further. The first 3 points are already a big advantage of owning an estate over a 512 parcel of mainland, and it's what estate owners pay for. Point 4 through 7 are extras that are pushing the envelope when compared to a owning a mainland parcel. So no, there's no need to seperate them any further.

Not wanting it to happen does not mean it cannot or will not happen. There is nothing protecting anybody's rights to any land features in SL. If LL decide tomorrow that ban lines are stupid and removes them all, what is to stop them? Likewise if they decide tomorrow that banlines extend to infinity, what is there to stop them?

Really, perhaps everyone should take a deep breathe here. For whilst people have the ability to exercise controls on their land, we need to be respecting that but there is no conceptual right that cannot be violated if LL decide to remove any of those controls.

I'd appreciate if you didn't put words in my mouth, nowhere did I say I wanted to get rid of banlines. There is a balance between landowner rights and the rights of other residents. I fall somewhere in the middle between the landowning possessors and the communists although I'll note that the latter involves only one part of that ideology (common property).

This isn't about me but I'll note that I'm on record on the forums and the JIRA for increasing the EXPLICIT ban to infinite height to revoke that right automatically for griefers while being strongly against several proposals that would if implemented gut the ability of people to fly over resident owned land in any meaningful way.

I'd give ∞:1 against that LL will never remove the ability of ban. I doubt they'll ever remove the ability to indiscriminately ban everyone from your parcel for any reason or no reason but that's definitely more likely.

There are definitely good reasons for people to at least temporarily have total banlines on although many residents forget they have them on or keep them on 24/7 when there's no reason to so I definitely foresee an auto-expire on total no access being implemented at some point or at least that being suggested.

I agree with your sentiment.

There are official airspaces already in SL, the mainland is crisscrossed with them all over. Some people even sail boats and drive cars on them. Planes, like other vehicles in real, stick to the public right-of-ways, air corridors and designated zones. The SL grid is laid out like the real world, so the same rules apply I would think. Should I try flying a microlight anywhere I please in real then I'm not going to get far without getting pulled out of the sky, shot down even in some places, am I? No I'm not. So I agree with your sentiment; What makes SL so special that this shouldn't apply here? Nothing, its just not that special.

A case can certainly be made for more public right-of-ways in SL, something I endorse whole-heartedly, but I think this has nothing to do with unfettered access by the general public to privately-held property. And yet I think more Linden-owned public right-of-ways is something that both vehicle enthusiasts and private landowners can find common cause in advancing together.

LL has done many things that people didn't see coming, there is no reason to think any feature is safe from being removed when it suits them.

Well this is opinion and not fact - it can certainly be argued the other way as well.
The only thing you can really say with certainty is that people have the ability to exercise this kind of control today and I happen to think that exercising that choice whilst is not what I would do, should be respected.
This does not mean that it should nor has to stay that way.