* Parcel owners can ban users based on account settings

This is a very complex issue. As the owner of an adult themed community, i am very concerned about the presence of underagers enteting my establishment (yes, they are here, sometimes admittedly so.)

My thought is that most adults will at one point in their SL life make a purchase, and hence have a payment method on file. It's really not a big deal to get verified. My second thought is the majority of unverified users are either accounts created solely for griefing or underage users who have no access to a credit card.

So, it is a tough decission on how to react to the new tools we are being given. I'm still not sure.

10 copper tarn disks.

I am still waiting for the ability to ban people based on whether or not they ban people based on account settings...

This point is particularly important to keep in mind for businesses, I think.

IF a user isn't verified, then they don't have either a Premium account, *or* access to the Lindex, which means that they're not likely to have anymore money than what friends have given them or that they've managed to get from money trees and/or camping chairs. [1]

Free accounts no longer get a stipend of any kind, and if they don't provide CC information they don't have any way to *buy* any money...which makes them not good prospects to sell to anyway.

[1] Or SL jobs, but do people really want to hire unverified users for most of the jobs out there that usually come up against *some* sort of adult content?

Only 3? We've had them almost daily, sometimes more than one per day. It does seem to be getting a little better since the MAC/hash ID change, though, but not much.


We finally turned on auto-return at 1 minute. They can rez stuff to unpack it but they can't just junk up the parcel. It works pretty well -- just make sure if group members add prims to have them set to the right group first on group-owned land.


That's not even the point of the account info feature. The club I help with offers a great deal of adult content and we see it more as a measure to protect us from underage kids -- not that credit cards are a magic cure but the fact is that there isn't any magic cure out there for sneaky underage kids. Every internet porn site I've seen requires payment information just to peek at their most explicit content (beyond teaser pictures). That and posting their TOS agreement, like LL does, are the only methods available for legal protection.

It's not about griefers.

It's not about discrimination.

It's about protecting adult content providers from the climate of sexual paranoia in this country.

Now that I've said all that, I'll add this: My group has discussed it and I don't think we're going to be using the verification ban at first. We've been doing a lot of unofficial surveying (read: "profile surfing" with members and far more of the unverifieds are just curious, intelligent residents who want to have some fun. A great many are from Europe or S. America and can't verify payment info even if they wanted to. We don't want to arbitrarily ban them without a better reason.

And on the other side of the coin, a good 30-50% of the griefers we've banned have actually had accounts older than 6/6/6. So our take on it, through unscientific study, is that the unverifieds will continue to be allowed access until such time as it gets to be a problem for us or some adult content provider somewhere gets dragged into court by an irate parent who can't control their own child.

It's a calculated risk, but based on input from attorney friends of mine and my own sense of the situation, it's not a critical need right now. I'd much rather have seen LL raise the ban list length from 50 to something like 500. We're in our 2nd turnover, taking names off the top and adding new ones on the bottom. Time to script a good old "TP home" scanner that only uses a ban list.

llTeleportAgentHome is on the list of functions to be depreciated or removed.

llEjectFromLand is the only viable long term option that will work for that.

I use a self scripted network of them on my land, but the problem is it doesn't alleviate the initial acts which require me to put someone on the network ban list.

Nor does it stop someone from sitting on the parcel border from using a sensor based targetting system and continuing to orbit people even though they are banned from the parcel....unless I use an llPush orbiter+96m sensor myself...which more or less puts me in violation of the Terms of Service as well.

Land owner security options are more or less flimsy and outdated in the face of the 6/6/6 invasion. And I don't think Account Info level bans are much help.

Maybe it'll keep a minor off the property. Maybe.

No question about that. The security and happiness of existing residents has been sacrificed at the altar of bigger subscription numbers, as I see it. That's not the best way to run your business -- not when a month or two's worth of careful planning and testing could have beefed up the tools before the switch was thrown. If they'd done that none of this would be an issue.


Maybe. Which is better than "we can't even check". All you need to do in court is show that you exercised due diligence. Little Johnny will always find a way around, but at some point it's no longer the provider's responsibility to protect him.

2 tarsk bits

meh, she's all yours.

People should be able to ban whoever they want, it's their land, they pay rent.

This is a game(or whatever), not RL, people can discriminate and ban and do whatever they want with their own land.

Woot.

The group enhancements in 1.12 may solve the problem; you'll be able to have just one group, and a set of appropriate roles that you can give the various people. Doesn't help your situation now, though.

Woohoo ! Now its time to use her as bait to get those port urts out...

There are other ways to make money in SL. For example, you could go to a casino opening when they are offering free plays; it's not too hard to make a couple of hundred L$ that way. You could visit clubs with moneyballs going, or win a costume contest (not impossible even wearing only free clothing, especially for men because so few play). You could play Payment Podium or some other in-world game show. None of these are camping -- they all involve active interaction with the world in one way or another.

Once you have seed money of L$1000 or so, you could then create things to sell; your money would pay for some necessary upload fees, a few textures, and rental on a small retail space for a few weeks. If you manage to create something that people actually like, you should be able to cover your costs and even have some L$ left over to buy a few things. Being a creator at this level of success just isn't all that difficult. (Making enough money to actually make an RL living at SL creation is another matter entirely, though not impossible.)

It's also possible to buy L$ through sources other than LindeX. The exchange rates usually aren't quite as good, but the payment options might be friendlier for some non-US residents. People have been blithely saying "it's easy to just give LL some credit card info" -- what if you live in a country where credit cards aren't common?

You obviously haven't seen very many internet porn sites then. Hell, just turn off safe search on Google and do an image search for something dirty. You will be amazed at what you find.

The "protecting minors from internet smut" argument is incredibly stupid and I am really amazed that anybody thinks there's any point to that. I hope you aren't counting on the lack of credit card information to keep your own kids from seeing unsuitable material, because there is stuff a lot more graphic than bumping polygons that look vaguely like naked humans out there that they'll have no trouble getting access to.

I actually don't care about the payment info on file status. I do care about the payment info used status, because it is very obviously not being updated right away.

or F: They MIGHT be alts of someone who DOES use a CC, and cannot use their CC to verify the account (as LL still has a limit, as far as I know), but still can transfer funds between avatars.

Ahem. I don't think this is going to end well.

I don't know why anyone's concerned. This isn't really a ban. It goes to a whopping 50m. So what it is, is effectively, "unverified accounts can't stand on the ground."

They can still float above you and shop/shoot/bomb/pee/yell/scream/dance whatever.

A: they will never use the lindex (so how will they be your customer if they don't have money)

I'm unverified, and I've used the lindex.

So have most of the people I know...

But I still think people should do whatever they want with their own land though.

Please note that Cindy said "protect us from underage kids" not the other way around.

Yeah being able to ban someone based on if they pay to play or not is pretty stupid. Just because they don't buy lindens doesn't mean they have no money like some have said you can come in for free create earn Linden and have cash to spend all without ever using a credit card.

Um. Okay. Didn't know you were allergic to them. Anyhow, I was responding to the comparison to internet porn sites, which is still stupid no matter who is being protected from whom, since it just doesn't hold true.

No I haven't. Because I'm pure and virginal, you know


Free teasers don't count, nor do sites that are set up privately to share stuff or non-American websites where laws are more lax. I'm talking about the commercial vendors of porn in the US -- the internet equivalent of SL's adult content providers. I haven't seen any that don't require payment information.


No, what is stupid is that our US Congress thinks they can strike a blow for morality by attacking online porn. The atmosphere of moral judgment and litigation in this country is out of control right now, and I don't think SL merchants are going to be exempt forever. Even if they are, I think most have enough integrity to feel like they want to do something even if it's not the most effective.

Furthermore, the admitted underage kids I've seen lately have, without fail, been unverified. One even told me there was no way for him to verify because he couldn't get his Mom's credit card. Like I said before -- stopping some is better than stopping none.


Actually, I monitor my kids' internet use personally. My husband is an IT geek and we routinely capture logs and cache to check up. We run Net Nanny on their PCs. The kids know this and behave accordingly. I also sit with them regularly when we're doing homework or chatting online and they know their computer priveleges depend on them being open about what they're doing.

Sadly, not all parents are as vigilant as we are. Those are the ones I worry about.

No, but I am allergic to frivolous lawsuits by stupid parents.

And, as Cindy said, just because other people don't give a crap what they expose kids to, doesn't mean she can't have her own standards.

I am not verified. I will never be verified. I spend thousands of L$ per day. Banning a person such as myself would be foolish for a business owner.

Suzanna, I agree completely with your statements in this thread.

Not in my case. Its for my own protection, you're just getting caught in the crossfire. I really don't care how much you have in lindens.

Were you selling L$?