So yeah....privacy more or less an impossible dream?

Something like 'Do not draw this parcel to users outside this parcel' would solve the problem. Conversely, the abilty of users to pick which parcels they don't want to see would be even more of a boon to SL... no more 'Impeach Bush'-type griefer builds.

-Ghoti

What about 2 checkboxes labeled:

X Blind everyone while I am bangin
X Alert everyone and show them my bang style

Will this mean that large sections of the mainland will be grayed out and filled with no fly no entry zones? The mainland is UGLY enough without this nonsense. I have trouble flying my avatar around as it is since one does not see the ban lines until you hit them and you find yourself being thrown a sim or more away. So soon the new greifing tool is to buy land all around someone and then make it invisible to them?

These days I rarely make trips to the mainland with the exception of a single sim and tping to a store and tping out. Soon I will stop visiting the mainland at all it is becoming not worth the hassle.

The mainland is becoming the exclusive home to perverts, children, police and griefers. There are still a few good residents on the mainland but they are the exception and few becoming fewer.

I can not ever see myself buying land again in this zone of madness.

The mainland is a shared, contiguous public space. I understand why some folks want privacy, but SL is probably the wrong place to look for it (unless you can swing an island).

Yea for privacy our best bet is to go to some other virtual world like THERE.com. Atleast on THERE you can buy a house and lcok the door. The Doors there actually DO keep people out.

In many online games your apartment/ Inn Room iss instanced. In that no one else can enter unless you allow them. Sort of like a very tiny Private Island.

If LL sold a "Bedroom" instanced area for x dollars a month that you could transport to from your land , I imagine it would be popular.

Of course those didnt have content creation like SL , nor were anywhere enar as social, but obviously it is technically possible to provide players privacy from other players, since its been done.

Point well taken, and I apologize to you, Leam, for making that rash statement in haste as I was rushing to get out the door. I will admit I had no knowledge of you whatsoever other than what you said in the post that I replied to, and the observation that your post count in the forums was in the low 20's. I did not see that your join date was an indication that you had been here for some time, nor did I take the time to go in-world and investigate your profile information. So again, I do sincerely apologise for making invalid assumptions about your creative abilities and background.

You asked that I be more specific:

The point I was trying to make was that the new camera range will not only make invasion of privacy more easy to do for more people, but will also potentially cause more harm for content creators in SL.

As a clothing designer, the issue of who gets to market first can make a large impact on the profitability of a new product line, as can the price any competing item is sold at. If real world famous-label clothing designer was making a new line of clothes, and weeks before the release or that line to the stores there were knock-offs of that same set of outfits for sale in local flea markets, based on stolen designs, would you not say that will hurt their sales? Sure, the actual designer originals are higher quality. But a lot of people who might otherwise have bought the original item won't bother if they already bought the knock-off, or if comparing the designer original to a cheap copy and not realizing the quality differences. For this reason, designs for new clothing and other products are usually regarded as very confidential information.

The same could be said for any new product that is being released for sale in Second Life. If someone uses spying methods to obtain information that will allow them to copy or steal an original design, and if they market it themselves, undercutting the original maker, that new product will be less valuable.

Time to market can be critical in other ventures in SL as well. For example, let's say you have a wonderful design concept for a new sim. You hold meetings with the team that is going to help you with the design, work with models and photo references to get the concept just right... and before you can get your sim built, someone who obtained information about your design does the same thing, but gets there first. The renters and businesses that you hoped to attract go to the other sim, and you're left possibly with an undeveloped sim and maintenance payments, and a far smaller customer base to pull from. I recently bailed on one new, full-sim build, because someone else essentially built the same thing I had been planning with my own team, and captured the market segment that I had hoped would fill my new sim. In that case, it was an honest case of parallell development. The other group made their own plans and acted faster than I did. I was able to bail out before committing my financial backer to a new sim purchase. But while spying did not cause the failure of that particular project, use of the new unrestrained camera could make it easier for someone to steal information and undercut a sim designer. And that could potentially cost a sim owner well over a thousand dollars for a sim that is suddenly no longer financially viable as planned.

You are correct that "obscurity" is the best defense when building new products in SL, and your advice on how one may protect against being spied on by use of obscurity is sound. But the new ablilty to remove camera constraints makes it much harder for content creators to obtain that "obscurity".

Would you consider political protest to be griefing? Still, you raise an interesting point, and I would much prefer a better solution than the ugly banlines.

Ceera, with your clothing example, I think there's a big difference between someone who wants the name brand status symbol and someone who is willing to settle for knock-offs. Marketing, reputation, et cetera often also play a big part of success, and knockoff dealers will have trouble even selling said item due to copyright trouble (if reported), let alone marketing.

Your clothing example is more relevant because it's possible to edit the object and roughshod copy the texture to clipboard, fix it in Photoshop, and "fix" it anyway. Copying an entire sim isn't all that likely because, while you might have the basic look, you won't have the scripts or textures, and as you know, these are very important to any good theme. I find it pretty unlikely that the knockoff would beat the original to market because of that, unless there were some really crappy textures.

Information is only valuable if you can make use of it, and therein lies the blessing: most information is junk to most people.

If it's imposed on you by being staging in your backyard with no regards for your personal feelings about it, yes. Freedom of speech includes the right to not listen.

I was wondering... has anyone considered an attempt to convince LL that snooping should be a minor ToS violation? The more I think about it, the more I realize that a technological solution will be impossible without crippling features, so a policy solution may indeed be the way to go. My thought is, it shouldn't really be bannable because everyone is a little curious... maybe a temporary kick from the game or something along those lines.

Freedom of speech doesn't necessarily mean that you must be heard; not the same thing. If it's in your backyard, it's easy to clean up. No build, no script, restricted access list, et cetera.

It's not the same thing indeed, but i meant it exactly the way i said. If someone chooses to do <whatever> right near my place (technically _not_ in my backyard but close enough to become part of the view without at the same time allowing me to remove their activity manually) ... i'd like to have means to *not* see them if i choose so. Much like we're provided with tools to mute things and AV in SL, and for the same basic reasons.

Morals and policy dictate how the freedom to do X ends when the Y rights of another are impacted, not the freedom to X itself. Visual mute tools would indeed be nice, but it usually easy enough to look away. Of course, if you're the one they're protesting, that's obviously something else entirely.

I would like to point out that some protests are sanctioned and subtle. I don't think it's really fair to lump them together with people who maliciously try to harm the grid.

I am not going to try and guess what is and isn't possible anymore.

I suggested Zones a long time ago and saw that there was a bunch of different proposals all addressing the same privacy goal.
1. Underground building
2. Hidden pockets of space
3. Private mini sims with teleporting
4. Restricted camera.

Then the critics said that any kind of object occlusion was impossible due to the huge resources that ray tracing needed.

Then SL added object occlusion.

Now. We should combine all the votes together and call it “Privacy areas of some kind”

There are many reasons to want privacy even in a public world, also keep in mind that I do not have to be on your land to see if you are on line. All I need is your key.
I can even check to see if you are in a 2 sim range by asking llKey2Name().
I do not need to be your friend, or anything else. I just need your key.

As a programmer in RL I am guessing that SL sends a packet to the client with a list of current guids in order to remove the “Ghost monster” issue it used to have.

Back around 1.8? you could actually fly underground and thus underground building is possible. They might even be able to make negative Z values possible.

Underground building would be one way to get rid of skyboxes. Plus the sim could also check objects with negative Z coordinates to see if a object is over the same piece of land that the AV is on to trim the list of objects being sent to the client. This would effectively make skyboxes invisible to all other skyboxes on other parcels.

The changes are complex and you would have the few second delay issue after teleporting, but it is doable.

However, fixing the memory leak and improving the cache system is a higher priority!

I am not finding that in the debug menu. Was it changed with the new update? If so is there an alternative?

Having been in a rage about the lack of "privacy" in SL, I can sympathize, sincerely. However, the detach cam tool is useful for building (as has been previously statedi n this thread)

Also realise, that even if I were to "cam" you from 3 sims away, without use of gadgetry that directly/indirectly violates the TOS, I would not be able to see anything said in chat. I know that doesn't do much to alleviate your paranoia, but it's just the facts.

Since v1.12.0, they split up the Debug menu (toggle-able with CTRL+ALT+D) into Client and Server debug menus. Go to Client menu -> Character -> Show Look At.

Thank you!! That did the trick.

Blah I've been so busy in world I haven't been able to get back to the forums for a bit.

I think that there are only two real viable solutions here. Islands are not viable...they're an incredible expense for something that isn't really necessary...yes I'm working on one myself, but I also have a relatively successful in world business, I am not the standard these things should be set by.

I believe what must be seriously considered is a parcel option to block non parcel resident cameras...which I believe would be the easiest method for LL to implement.

I also believe that LL should investigate the possibilities of zoned instancing for parcels...allowing the land owner the ability to subdivide a portion of their parcel to designate it as a zoned instance that is only resident on the sim server as geometry data and is ONLY rendered on the client side to people with access to the instance.

It essentially creates a "private" room which costs zero server assets to render because the only thing the server is actually pushing is geometry data which is fully rendered only at the client viewers accessing it.

I think either idea is feasible, the instance idea is harder to implement, but is a more functional fix than camera restrictions, because it not only defeats free wheeling cameras, but also defeats prim sitters and sit sliders as well.

who cares, they don't know who you are.. what t he heck are you doing that is so horrible that anyone seeing woud have a conption?!!?

Thought you pay $125 American a month for what is a 1/2 a sim in the "wild west" of a mainland sim. Cost you $70 more for a sim that you have much more control over.



Dont think this will happen since it will also block the Lindens Cameras.



Wonderous, grey out areas. Talk about making Second Life even more UGLY than it is now,



Think it will create more like mini black holes. Something like this could very well kill off the mainland once and for all. The sims look bad now now think of a sim filled with blank areas from the sea to 770 meters. Truly wonderous!



The problem with the prim sitters is how things work in SL. Doing this will mean a change of how things are built in second life. If objects cant go through another objects a lot of objects will just not work. This will require a complete rewrite.

Your proposals will probally not get put in place. If you want privacy you are going to have to pay for it. Perhaps Linden Labs can come up with a Privacy sim where you can do what you to in private. I dont care if you have "privacy" but when it impacts my enjoyment though making SL a even more UGLY and hostile place it crosses the line.

It could simply render the landscape of the parcel and nothing else. Seeing some regular landscape instead of the usual sea of oversized cocks, "No Entry" barriers and rotating billboards ... would be actually an improvement, looks-wise.

Yes thats all well and good, in fact I could pay $195 a month....the problem is the 1500 dollars it takes to get started. Thats alot of money. Alot more money than alot of people make in an entire month at a real life job.





Umm...no, it doesn't have to. You're basically coming up with a black and white answer that basically gives you some sembalance of credibility to deny this as an option. In fact, you refuse to more or less consider either idea and you've come up with alot of flimsy, rather illogical reasons as to why you feel they should not be considered. But regardless, the Lindens could work in an admin level ability to not allow their cameras to be blocked I'm sure. Its not like it would be any more than reverse engineering the process of restricting it in the first place.





I don't think anything could make most of the mainland any uglier than it already is, but once again you've not even logically considered the process. There wouldn't be any grayed out boxes...there wouldn't be ANYTHING at all..except maybe a "INSTANCED" border thats like the Buy Pass border we have now. What YOU would see beyond that would just be grass and terrain...because whats actually THERE is whats actually there on the SIM server. The stuff INSIDE the instance is being pushed as geometry and texture data to the authorized clients...thusly all you'd see if this was implemented was sims full of...oh my...green green grass? How would that make SL any more ugly than it already is?




Again, blank areas, or open land and sky? Wow..what would be so wrong with this? I mean nothings more appealing than a sim thats filled with badly textured boxes and spam advertisements from sea level to 770 meters. And thats what we've already got. Instancing would not only clear some of the mess up...but would also allow people that are STUCK LIVING IN THAT MESS the ability to GET AWAY FROM IT without having to abandon their land....oh my...what a terrible thing!



Yeah thats obvious. You don't care unless it affects you



I fail to see how something that would actually create more open land and sky on the sim server side UGLY and hostile. Obviously you have too. You should try thinking things out a bit more before you attack people.

Not attacking you, we just dont agree on this one thing.

Wonder what Linden Labs will do?

This is what we call an inflated sense of self importance.

Rox

I'm beginning to think this could be cleared up with some sort of llDetectView function, if not policy. Within limits, of course (to prevent accidental wandering problems).