Idea to ban Land Scanners

I got an idea.

Okay, so land scanners suck. We all know that.
(a) They slow down the sim.
(b) They scan other people's property.

I assert that land owners should, under TOS, be able to request that the owner of a land scanner to HAVE TO exclude his/her land from scanning, as it:
(a) Invades SL privacy
(b) Clearly falls under the laggy / spammy neighbor clause that deals with particle abusers and the like.
(c) Slows down the sim, and if someone has said they won't release land, then that is intentionally draining resources for no cause.

These all seem like abuse report offenses.

Let's all support this, get a Linden to acknowledge this as valid, and force land scanner barrons to stop, by sheer fact that they will have to prove that their scanner can exclude certain land. (It'll be a big hassle.)

a) How does it invade privacy? It gets the exact same data as if you held your mouse over the land. Who holds land should not be a kept secret.
b) It does? It's not spamming your land with anything, it's scanning.
c) Everything scripted slows down the Sim. Next, let's ban llSensorRepeat, because it slows down the sim. And llSetText, because it can slow down the sim. And llSetTextureAnim, because it slows down the sim.. and...

No. Banning stuff in the TOS won't work, because it's unenforcable. What's to stop someone from making a script that has the land scanner embedded deep within the script? Is it a land scanner, or a firework? You tell me.

The solution is social pressure. But, no one can agree on who to pressure with what and for what, so chaos reigns.

LF

I disagree on all counts.

The spirit of land scanning is evasive and abusive and there's no reason someone should be exploiting YOUR land's info for gain. I'm all about property rights, bud.

It's all about the OPP!

Land scanning is not always evasive and/or abusive. One of the members of the land sharing group I'm in places a land scanner that runs once daily to generate a chart of the whole sim, which we put up on display for the public's use and benefit. It's done with the blessing of our own land, and scheduled to generate as little negative impact as possible to the rest of the sim. Runs once a day, in the middle of the night, etc.

It's not the practice of land scanning that's a problem, it's when it is used for greedy purposes and done in a manner that's not neighbourly that's a bad thing. I have a 16m square stuck in the middle of my own land that's got a land scanner in it, and it's just plain sleazy. But I dont blame the scanner script, I blame the sleazeball that put it there.

Personally I think let's just do away with the concept of public land completely and allow only private/auction sales. That'll make the concept of land scanning for land barony purposes a useless task. But at least that'll deal more with the source of the problem, rather than just a side-effect of it.


- Newfie Pendragon

Unfortunately, all SIMs have limited CPU resources. Land scanners add little attraction. I'm all for simply deprecating land scanning functionality.

Also, appeal to 'social pressure' is a meaningless argument in a reasonably anonymous environment. Especially for me, all it does for me is to encourage me to scan more not less.


That said, I have tonnes of land scanners. And will continue to do so as long as they are available. SL is a game, and land scanning is a rule.

Telling me to not use a rule to my advantage is like asking me to drill holes in my head.

I'd like to get RID of the rule, but until we do, I will always use it to my advantage.

They also

1. Have no usefulness whatsoever to land barons any more, except in the rare occasion someone hits the 'release' button on their land.
   
2. Have perfectly legitimate uses elsewhere, and it would be a judgement call that LL could screw up making when trying to determine an object's legitimacy.
   
3. Slow the sim down less than most other objects, unless they're coded extremely badly, and if an object is slowing a sim down enough to where it's actually NOTICEABLE, I'm fairly certain LL will remove the object for being badly coded.

There's no point in "banning" something when you can't enforce the ban, when other objects that are exactly the same (as far as resource usage) have perfectly good uses, and when the object in question HARDLY EXISTS ANYMORE.

Seriously, with the exception of the land scanners that are left behind from pre 1.5 days, what else could be out there? Public land isn't exactly something that pops up often these days.

I have an army of land scanners, they fly from SIM to SIM, they fly in circles, up, down, they check out AV's, they stop to checkout trees. They are as small as you can make a prim, phantom and transparent. Someday they will keep secrets and have dreams.

i agree 100%

with jack.

I am one of Jack's legions of land scanners, and already I have done much more than keep secrets and dream.

But I agree: There is no place for badly-coded land scanners of dubious purpose that have not transcended their original limitations.

Guys.. let it go!

and fyi, land scanner do not slow down sims... well not mine anyways! (yes I tried building one to see if I could make it better then the others, with mine you see 0 difference in the sims preformance!)