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

Argent, I've never seen you fly in the face of logic for so long and so tenaciously.

I said - not hovering over yards and houses on the way to a landing strip - but using their yards and houses AS your landing strip. Is this what you in effect have been saying, or not? Because it sounds as if this is what you are saying - that your plane is the important thing and doggone those houses for being in your way. If a ban line = a fence or phone pole/phone wires, then a pilot should avoid taking off and landing in neighborhoods, right?

The only time I hear about a pilot doing such a thing in "RL" is when they are *crashing.*

As for #2, that's good. But, if you are far from there, what do you do then?

As for your #3 I really don't think so. You keep forgetting the 'annoyance factor.'

No one likes planes going over their homes and it's why neighborhoods near airports are almost always cheaper. (Also you seem to be describing some hovercraft of the future, not airplanes, in #3.)

I have made at least half a dozen proposals for real privacy and security solutions that solve all the problems with ban lines, over the past three years, had long and effective discussions with Lindens on the subject, and been working harder than just about anyone to come up with a better solution that Linden Labs would accept. I have also NOT been demanding anyone take their banlines down. So don't tell me that "Any solution that fixes their concerns while retaining landowners rights to keep random people out is simply not giving them what they want". I want MORE rights for landowners. I want landowners to have something EFFECTIVE they can do to retain their privacy. Not these pointless glass walls that are all Linden Lab seems willing to grant us.

But it's not only about privacy, for people. For many people, ban lines are what they want and they are satisfied with them.

I'd find being invisible or having invisible visitors creepy, for instance. Avatar are ephemeral enough as it is.

Not.

Not in the slightest. Please try and read what I actually write.

There's lots of open areas that aren't "yards or houses" by any stretch of the imagination. The roofs of shopping malls and clubs make great landing strips.

All planes in Second Life are "some kind of hovercraft of the future" compared to RL planes.

Ban lines are all about giving you invisible visitors, but who proposed such a thing?

I have been and you have said repeatedly that things are 'in your way' and that you have the right to fly where you want to. That if you are flying over someone's house and it has a ban line it interrupts your flight. Sounds like you are saying that your plane has right of way wherever it wants to go and you do not want anyone's ban line in the way. If not then what HAVE you been saying?



What if they considered a craft landing on their mall to be a form of griefing?



But you were talking about RL - you said people would - well it is right there above, a few posts. Lol.

Here's an idea. Would you please state in 2 sentences exactly what you would like to have happen or to have changed? Without a general statement like "more privacy" or "more rights for landowners." That's politician-speak.

A ways back someone proposed making everything on the lot invisible and/or a 'cloud.' Which for some of us with bad eyesight is about the same thing...Or when we're tired.

You can see a big avatar in a superhero costume hanging off your ceiling. You can't really see a cloud as well.

You don't remember that whole part of the conversation??

Nope, you're mixing up separate only tangentially related threads.

1. The effect of clipping an invisible ban box when flying low (for whatever reason) is an example of harm caused by ban lines. I said nothing about buzzing houses while doing so. Most ban lines are around chunks of open fields with almost nothing in them, not houses.

2. The other subthread is my response to people claiming that there is no reason to expect free flight anywhere except over Linden Land.


Then I guess they wouldn't want my business, and if they objected I'd spend my money elsewhere.



When people bring up RL and make claims about RL that make it sounds like it's more restricted than it is, I correct them. That doesn't mean that I accept their analogies.

I already said that. In as many sentences. Many times.

What I would like to happen is for people to show common sense and common courtesy, and not set up ban lines in silly places.

What I would like to change is for better tools to be made available to provide people with real privacy... now I have made several proposals and I could go on with all kinds of details but that's going to make for an uncomfortably long sentence and I'd run out of energy long before I covered more than a fraction of them.

Some of them are in Jira. Some of them are in the forum archives.

I think you significantly misunderstood the proposal. That proposal isn't even in this thread, and it was nothing to do with ban lines.

This is great! I'm with you all the way!

How do we do it? Seriously. How do we make this happen?


Sounds good again.

Well, I mostly make it happen by talking to people who do it, and explaining that they'd done it (a good many people have no idea) and ho wit wasn't having the effect they thought (for example, they're not having any effect at all on their skybox).

Having better documentation and examples of what this kind of thing really means would be good.

There are some changes LL could make in ban lines that would help. For example, rendering them in some way (maybe as a reassuring shimmer in the air) even for people who aren't affected by them. But I'd rather they made them unnecessary.

This is all good . . . I agree. But what is really needed is a cultural change, a change to the way people think about themselves and others in SL. Doing this one landowner at a time is going to be a lengthy process. I think that LL could make it easier by changing or creating tools in a way that encourages this. Maybe FEWER "aggressive" tools like ban lines (so as to encourage people to talk), and, as you say, more and better tools that passively protect privacy?

I agree taht we need cultural change in SL. Where I disagree with you is on the point you make that it would be a lengthy process doing it one landowner at a time. It's not the landowners whose attitudes need to be changed. It's everybody's. When I build a house with walls, windows, and doors (which I do lock), that house is not for you to set foot in without invitation. That is the fact that people do not grasp. I, for one, only use ban lines when I use them because I cannot say "On 3:23:21 AM on September 2nd, Johnny Mullamark is going to create an avatar and come to my property trying to enter my house, so I need to keep him out", so I pre-emptively ensure that no newly created avatar can enter my property. This is accomplished with ban lines. People can still see it but cannot enter it. Until all the Johnny Mullamark's of the world understand that they cannot enter certain places, ban lines will still remain necessary.

So this is the cultural change that is required. Teaching the great unwashed idiots out there that there are places they have no business going, and getting them to respect it as such. Otherwise I have no regrets about pre-emptive bans, plain and simple.

A lot better then you're doing judging by the responses you've been gettting in this thread. Had this been a boxing match, you'd be dead by now.

But I have to give you credit, I really do. I've never seen anyone try so much, so hard and so desperately to convince others of what they should and shouldn't do with what's theirs.

Save face, let it go.

It's ok to walk away. Trust me, no one will think any less of you.

Pfft!!

You guys are talking in generalities again. "More privacy" and "common sense" and "courtesy" are politiican speak. Who DOESN'T want those things?

/me sighs.

And sorry if I mixed up one of the many ban line threads with another. It was still yourself and Elanthius or Ezekiel or one of those E guys talking about making people into clouds to address this 'problem' so that people would not feel the need for ban lines, Argent. I'm sorry I don't want to be a freaking CLOUD on my own land, nor do I want everything else to seem invisible. (And how would that help pilots - wouldn't they run right into things even more?)

Why do you not simply acknowledge that your vision and the vision of the millions of other SL residents do not exactly line up? That, if you fly, you are going to run into obstacles, because *it's not a freaking flight path.* Your way is to remove the obstacles, not correct your own behavior or even adjust it a bit. But,

Argent why do you persist in answering things I did not ask, and answering as if I said something else entirely. To wit:

I said: "But you were talking about RL - you said people would - well it is right there above, a few posts. Lol."

And you said: "When people bring up RL and make claims about RL that make it sounds like it's more restricted than it is, I correct them. That doesn't mean that I accept their analogies."

You have to be obfuscating on purpose because I think you are brighter than this. You had to know what I was referring to, because you had JUST said it. OF COURSE real life is restricted in that way. Here is what you had claimed about real life.

You had claimed that if people could, in real life, they would take airplanes from house to house and land in each other's yards. I'm sorry but no, it wouldn't happen. I point out why and you ignore that for more sarcastic retorts instead.

Why you'd think people could or would hop wherever they want in planes in RL, I don't know, but it's not only ridiculous and a supposition but has nothing to do with this argument - except to try and bolster your argument that *because you want it to be so* everyone should be glad to let others fly into their land.

It isn't so, it will never be so. There will always be people who feel they are being inconvenienced or for whatever reason do not wish others to drive, sail or pilot a craft through their own land. That goes for RL and for SL.

The rest of your post is just an attempt to sound reasonable with politico-speak, when in fact, you've consistently said little more to bolster your argument than this is the way you want things.

Oh and you might define 'buzzing a house' another way but I'd define it as flying under 100 meters over someone's land. Not everyone likes that. But you won't seem to actually respond to things that I say, such as that.

I have asked more than once for you to actually reply to a point I've made Argent but you refuse, instead replying with something that has nothing to do with that point. Other than, to shoot the idea down, I guess. I finally got you to respond to "How about more official airspace?" with, "it's all official airspace."

And you try to make it look as if everyone else is being unreasonable? You have not budged one MILLIMETER since this entire conversation began.

Your replies basically consist of "well you're wrong" or "you misunderstood" without clarifying or explaining just HOW I am, or correcting me with something of substance. And, generalities like "we need change."

You're all sounding like Obama, but hey, it got HIM elected...

the problem with this is it puts the responsibility back on the landowners shoulders. IMHO, until this sense of "entitlement" stops, ban lines will stay up. while you can im your neighbor and ask reasonably(or what you perception of reasonable is), to please either lower or remove something that is perfectly within their rights to use, not all will be willing to do so.

and as hard as it is to accept, because they can is a valid reason. unless you actually pay a portion of their tiers, you have not one right to tell a land owner what they should and should not do on what they see as their property.

If you are flying low enough to clip a ban line, then you ARE flying too low, and you ARE buzzing their house (or empty field, which is their perogative to allow access to or not, whether others agree or not.)



When you are the head of LL, you can decide what is silly, and force the rest of us to abide by it.

Do you see that what you are actually saying - and I asked you/gave an opportunity for you to clarify it more, but you could or did not - is "I don't like this, so it shouldn't be." It's just egotism, in my opinion. In order to tell others what to do with their own belongings you have to have more reason than "I don't like it," if you are a reasonable person (or otter.)



You might've picked your favorite and used one or both of the 2 sentences I requested, to outline it a bit. If people haven't voted it into existence yet, it may be because they disagree with its philosophy or implementation.

This.

That is exactly what it is.

In the interest of providing more informed responses (and just out of rampant curiousity) I tried taking a freebie sports car out for a spin.

The first problem was finding a rez spot with road access. I suppose I could have LM'd a spot on a road somewhere and rezed the car on a sandbox but that seems a little silly to me. Thus the question of why someone would want road access seems answered to me.

Driving was... interesting. I was routinely outpacing the rezing of the road. Staying on the road was sufficiently problematic that ban lines would have been the least of my problems.

Certainly I doubt any land owner would appreciate a driver getting their car stuck halfway into one of their interior walls (thankfully that happened with an empty shop or it would have been very embarrassing).

Do people really drive under those conditions? Why would anyone *not* have ban lines if people are driving under those conditions? Maybe lag was particularly bad for me or particularly bad where I was attempting to drive and maybe pricier vehicles lag less and/or handle better but as it stood it seemed somewhere between very silly and completely impractical.

Let's face it, the virtual world has HUGE limitations. Maybe we are reaching a plateau of development like music today or modern art movements.

That's true, too. Thanks for the example Alexander.

I have a car that drives Linden roads slowly enough that it doesn't go flying, and I keep a roadside lot which allows people to rez a car, if you'd like the landmark. I've offered this more than once in the forums and in the group chat but so far only one taker.

I also have a spot that, until or unless I sell, at least, people can rez a boat in and the sailing is pretty good from that point too.

(ETA: Both landmarks and the freebie car are available to anyone who sends me a note card requesting them, in-world.)

All of this, what's been said on 'both sides' and in the middle of the discussion, as well as the current mostly impractical state of land, sea and air travel in SL, are reasons I have kept saying, why not offiical air space? Picture this possibility:

A Linden island that is completely devoted to air travel. Lets people rez planes, gives info cards on flight paths which are currently navigable, has helpers there to answer questions about air travel within Second Life. Maybe people could rent hangars, and maybe there could be associated shops. I dunno. Maybe just places to take off/land in.

A Linden island that did the same thing for car travel and led onto one of the Linden roads. It could sell 'maps' that listed current roadside public rez zones (not places people didn't intend to be but rez zones people specifically allow the public to use.)

A Linden island that was at a point where people could sail from, and which again, helped people to be able to sail and enjoy sailing as much as possible, around SL.

Specifics, and things no one would be against, I'd think.

*Ban lines are not the problem, organisation is.*

Ok, so I maybe misspoke a bit . . . perhaps because I was subconsciously trying to suck up to Argent (I have a mortal fear of feral ferrets . . .)

I should have made it clearer that the cultural change is indeed required from EVERYONE.

In RL, these things are much better organized. I don't need to put up a barbed wire fence because I know that people WON'T violate my space. At the same time, I know that if I do stray on to someone's property, I likely won't be facing a shotgun: the worst I'll get is an admonishment. And it works this way because there are cultural assumptions and norms that govern most people's behaviour in RL.

So the question is, how do we create that here? Well, part of it might be better prep of noobies by LL when they enter for the first time. And better education of people in SL generally about property rights and civil behaviour. But another part might be to fiddle with the tools that affect both the wanderers and the homeowners.

1) Give homeowners more REAL privacy, by somehow restricting the ability to cam into houses, or cheat to get around locked doors and fences.

2) Take away the shotgun. Reduce the impact, visually and otherwise, of ban lines and orbs, so that they DON'T turn every parcel into an armed camp. What is required is less aggressive tools. Currently, I literally can't walk onto some parcels without group membership or adult verification. Why can't THIS be applied, or something like it? Do we REALLY need to orbit everyone who strays onto our property?

And no, I don't think that "because I can" is reason enough to put up ban lines. I "can" do all sorts of unneighbourly things on my RL property, but I don't because it would be WRONG and . . . well, unneighbourly.

That said, UNTIL the culture changes, or better tools become available, I can't suggest an alternative to ban lines IF one feels that strongly about the issue, or is really being harassed by interlopers.

Fact of the matter is, however, that the current system doesn't work. And insisting on ban lines isn't going to make it any better.

That's mind-boggling.

You've had no ban lines for over a year?
What happened when you removed them?

Did these "THEY" people that you describe come swarming in, harass you, mess with your stuff? How many of the "THEY" did you have to eject?

Possibly, like my with my unrestricted lands, you didn't notice any "THEY"s at all.
As I've posted before, I've only had to eject two "THEY"s in over two years. The last one was over a year ago.


The implication of you putting ban lines up again is that you now consider that any of the people who might have crossed your land and never abused it or harassed you or others were actually .......*gulp*....."THEY"s.

DANGER!! ALERT!! ZOMG!! The "THEY"s have been wandering the grid posing as friendly non-abusive ordinary people!!
They've been watching us - surveying our parcels - gathering data in preparation for THEY-Day - when they will log in by the tens of thousands and rampage over the grid, doing bad stuff.

It's possible that an amount of wandering into parcels that are not explicitly public would be prevented by educating newcomers. Many may perceive SL as just like the WWW in that you can go into websites/places and look around.

However there will always be a core of people who simply don't give a ..... No amount of education will change them.
Landowners will always need some easy method of getting rid of individuals -- or getting rid of groups in the case of abuse by a number of people.

Ban Lines are OTT - particularly on an unoccupied parcel and very particularly on a parcel that has been unoccupied for months and even years.

I've had a 'private' building platform and a skybox since my First Land days. These have been visited by strangers occassionally, but it's rare.
If I did have a space that I wanted to ensure was *physically* private, then I'd use a security orb - even if that space were on the ground.


When ban lines could not be made invisible, they were a gross visual discourtesy to neighbours and passerbys. Most neighbours that I spoke with ended up removing them. They found that they didn't actually need them. I never understood the mentality that would insist on using them despite being aware of the blight they caused.

I know that some people turn them on without realising they have done so. There is no indication to them that the lines are on.

Culture changes and better tools are required.
In the meantime, I make no apologies for raising the topic asking people if they really need to have them.
One part of the culture that needs to change is the Culture of Fear. I'm convinced that the threat is mostly imagined.

understands this. they can run up your legs and do damage



definately agrees with this. but how many are willing to actually change? i'm for whatever works for all, not a few.



agrees with this point as well. so how do we at least carry some of this over into SL? it seems that since many view this as not real, that the very rules that restrict outrageous behavior in RL, are exaggerated in SL.



nods agrees also with this. but i would focus more on Property Rights within SL, along with a class on how and when to use a security orb. despite the bad press they are getting when used properly, they restrict no ones enjoyment of boating(once set it to wide and catapulted a boater across the sim)flying and exploring of SL.



YES! if this could be implemented, ban line use will definitely decrease.



again with most orbs is the not knowing how to adjust them that causes that. if someones land is open for exploration, but their home is not, you can restrict the orb to that particular area. ban lines i agree are a horror, but again until LL comes along with something better we is stuck. and it sounds like where you live is a horror. did you try to open a friendly dialog with your neighbors?



i say because they can is a valid reason, because they paid for it. if some choose to be jerks, they paid for the right to be jerks. does not mean it's right, it just is. but also keep in mind that, and i can't say this enough, many use the orbs for their personal reasons. their world their way.



nods sadly agrees with this as well. it's not that i feel strongly about the issue, it's the "YOUR SL IS INTERFERING WITH MY SL! SO CHANGE! NO U!" back and forth with so far barely a compromise being met that i am taking a stand against. and until LL sreps in and takes a definite stand either way, again we is stuck.