privacy/security for land owners - without the need for scripts

Ok. This proposal is designed to give land owners more powers to protect their land - specifically, the ability to stop anyone who cannot access their land (who is in the banned avatars list for that parcel, or who is not on the allow list in a restricted parcel) from seeing anything on the parcel or being within the parcel.

Why would this be a good thing? Well, the current system suffers from 3 problems :
1) Currently, anyone can alt-zoom and rotate their camera through walls to see anything up to 60m away, even if they cannot physically access this thing. This means it is possible to spy on restricted land.
2) Currently, making your land restricted only stops avatars from entering it at ground level - they can fly over it at a height of (IIRC) about 40m, and that is allowed. This means the land ACL is USELESS at protecting even moderately tall buildings, let alone skyboxes.
3) Currently, stopping someone from entering your land 'bounces' them - which means they cannot access anything on the other side of your land. If several large plots 'bounce' everyone but their owners, then movement on that sim becomes difficult.

Now for my proposals to fix these problems :
1) stop avatars being sent any information about objects and other avatars in parcels to which they have no access. Put simply, if they can't access the land it's on, they should not be aware of its existence. This means avatars, objects, etc should NOT rez for a client trying to view what is in a restricted parcel. They should, however, rez if they move out of the restricted parcel into land the avatar CAN access.
2) stop avatars being located in a parcel they cannot access (even if sitting, flying, whatever) at any height less than 1000.
3) if someone tries to move into a parcel which they are not allowed access to at a height less than 1000, they are teleported through the parcel, to the closest land on the other side of the parcel (or parcels, if there are several restricted parcels in a row) which they can access. If such land does not exist (say, all the land in that direction to the edge of the last sim in that direction is restricted), they are stopped from moving through the parcel boundary at all, and simply 'bounce' off it, as they do now.

This would :
1) guarentee privacy for everything in restricted land - no more worries about people snooping on your land. No more need for expensive 3rd party security scripts to keep people off your land. Just simple use of powerful LL provided tools.
2) guarentee security for tall buildings and skyboxes
3) guarentee that this security would NOT stop people from getting past your land to other places they want to go - it would not interfere with normal travel around sims, or flying, or even flying around in cars above the sim - it would just mean either you had to fly above 1000, or you had to accept being teleported through any land you did not have access to be in.

To counter all these problems, it would make sense if the proposal I'm detailing in this post were implemented.

Please post comments/suggestions about this topic... I'd like to get a decent amount of feedback on this before I propose it on secondlife.com/vote

For 2) and 3) I'd alter this to:

Any non-moving avatars in restricted land are ejected. If an avatar is moving, then they may continue moving, but if they stop then they are ejected to the side of the land they were moving toward before stopping (ie if they're heading north they get thrown to the north side). This would be for ANY height (though at really high up places you shouldn't be able to stop at all).
If they cannot access that area, and are moving through it, then all objects within it are treated as phantom (so if you're just flying and someone has a huge tower on private land, you won't hit it while it rezzes and get ejected).

However, overall I'm still mainly in favour of replacing land access restrictions with something better/more flexible in general.

Honestly, I can't see the advantage of allowing avatars to fly over land they can't access, becuase :
1) What's the advantage of letting them be there if they can't see or interact with any objects there?
2) This still lets them be on your land...
3) griefers will make scripts that move their av at very slow rates to avoid being ejected...
4) it lacks the advantage of helping people cross land that they aren't interested in being on anyway


Definately agreed!
At a minimum, we should have :
1) the ability to ban specific avatars from entering our land at all, at any height
2) the ability to stop objects in our land rezzing for those who can't go there
3) the ability to assign parcel managers, similar to estate managers for islands (can edit, move, return etc objects on the parcel)
4) the ability to specify the height of the 'red tape' around land (if 'red tape' continues to exist in future versions, which I'm hoping it won't, I hope that 'render restricted parcels as blank chunks of land which you teleport through will replace it).
5) the ability to ban anyone in certain groups from your land
6) the ability to assign permissions on your land to a list of avs or groups you pick, with checkboxes.... "can enter land", "can return others objects", "can delete others objects", "can terraform", "can rez objects even if no build is set", "can use scripts even if no script is set", "can fly if no fly is set", "can move others objects", "can edit others objects", "can freeze other avs on land", "can teleport home other avs on land", "can edit ban list of land", "can edit pass list of land" both for a 'default' set, and also for sets of avs and groups selected by the land owner.

Access would be checked like this:
Does person X have access to Y?
1) If X owns the land, then yes.
2) If X is in a set of avs/groups which have custom permissions on the land, then check the permissions of that set they are in, if that set has the permission, then they have the permission. If they're not in a set, check default permissions

The reason is to keep this from obstructing people who are flying over your land on the way to something else, or just for the sake of flying in general. If you're concerned then you can replace 'not moving' with 'moving slower than X speed', but having access restrictions keep you from flying would be really annoying

Im not sure griefers are that big a deal for this, if they have some dumb script to keep them moving, then you can still just eject them from the land. It's not perfect but it's better than it is now (where they can go anywhere above the 20m or whatever for current restrictions.

If nothing in the parcel is being rezzed (which means "no interaction" at all, or it's meaningless) for the avatar, and the avatar's not rezzed for anyone else while in the parcel, why bother with any more "security" than that? They're in the phantom zone and can't even see out of it!

This whole suggestion is poorly thought out and will just lead to increased griefing by landowners.

Yes, I said "griefing by landowners".

As it is, I'm of the opinion that the likes of llUnSit, llEjectFromLand and llTeleportAvatarHome should all have a height restriction added, to prevent further Balkanization of the main grid. Maybe with the proviso of allowing a second "zone" at an arbitrary height (with a limited total Z depth) that could be so controlled, to allow for a protected skybox. Or a sub-ground "basement" zone that has access controls that can't be overridden, or somesuch.

Oh no, someone might see your roof while sailing by in a hot air balloon or a jet. Scary thought. I'm tired of being orbited while doing something completely innocuous (like, say, flying across a sim at 200m or so, to take in the view). It's griefing, and it should be stopped.

And 1000m? You can't even get a nonphy vehicle up that high, it's impossible.

What about people who want 3 zones, or 4, or X?
It's just not fair to limit protection of a landowner's land, which they rightly paid for, to a few places. ALL of it should get protection, at least up to the point where building is no longer possible (about 700-800m IIRC). If people want to fly above land, fine... but they shouldn't just be able to go up to 200m or even 700m and be suddenly exempt from access restrictions.... especially as some objects, such as skyboxes, really are that high and need protection too.


This proposal for access controls that stop objects in restricted parcels rezzing would mean that land owners no longer had a reason to orbit anyone that came onto their land, becuase they can just use built-in access controls to keep their stuff secure instead. Meaning if this was implemented, you should get orbitted less.

Oh, and I don't care about the people seeing my roof - I care about the people being able to scan through my entire house, even my bedroom, work areas, etc..... I mean for crying out loud, our houses should be safe from people being able to just walk into them and interact with our stuff if we want to protect them... and we shouldn't have to pay a lot of money for security orbs to do this.


So set it to 700m. As a general rule, if you can build somewhere on your land, you should be able to restrict access to that part of your land. Meaning, the access limit should be at least at the boundaries of the permissible build zone limit, meaning, at least 700m.

よく愚かで愚かな意志の決して受容無し
私の土地を避けなさい

This is an issue with at least 1 Sim when I try and fly across the southern landmass after crossing the line of Sims connecting the north and south. (all of the land except the roads is owned by the same Group) You get no warning at all before you are teleported Home. If you step a toe off the Linden owned road in that Sim you are gone. I did however see what appeared to be the same script on a land plot or 2 elsewhere, but it gave you a 20 second warning to get off the land before you were teleported home. This does keep people from traveling at any height (even 1000m+) over that Sim to get anywhere else on that section of Mainland. I see that as disrupting other people's enjoyment of SL. If I simply bounced off the land because of a system like the above, or were able to fly over it at height X, it would resolve this type of issue.

I propose the banning of all access restrictions and security scripts.

SL is an online game. If you're doing something where you're afraid people might see you, you probably shouldn't be doing it anyway.

If you keep getting disturbed by friends... politely explain that you're busy, and if they persist, remove their friendship.

If you keep getting disturbed by random people... be grateful they consider you important enough to be bothered.

Honestly, I don't know what the big fuss is. There are far more griefers of the overzealous security script type than the grid crashing type - and nothing is being done about them.

In real life, you don't own airspace above land you own up to an infinite height - so why do people expect it in SL?

Lewis

1. Height should be raised. I believe that the common access limit in RL is up to 1 mile above your property before eminent domain automatically kicks in. That's ~1.61km. Now, in SL, that's pretty far. Might I recommend about half of that, or even just the build height limit of 500m?

2. As for land griefers - report them. If you get Teleported Home after stepping in their property, without any warning, they're really operating against the TOS. With fair warning, they should be permitted to script you off their land.

3. As for privacy, I whole-heartedly support the idea (and even the suggested solutions marked above...). There is a similar feature request on the vote boards for allowing you to IGNORE land, that would have the same effects, but from the other side of the coin, allowing you to ignore ugly-assed billboards and the like. The ability to privatize your land would be nice.

It's not so much being bothered by people as it is allowing your bans to be 'effective' against unwanted snooping on your land from just off the premises.

My personal point of view is :
1) the red 'ban' lines should extend, at minimum, as far up as you can build, to protect things like skyboxes. If that means they have to extend to 750m, they should extend to 750m, for the simple reason that without this, buildings are left unprotected by the one feature, banning, that is meant to provide security.

3) when one enters a no access parcel, one should be moved through to the other side of it instantly. This would mean that flyers would not be bothered by no access parcels on their flight path.

4) If 1 and 2 were implemented, then security orbs could just add people to the ban list, and this would be enough to get rid of them without causing any griefing behaviour.


5) As for the "we don't need security, just don't do anything bad, and you'll be ok".... clearly, this doesn't protect you from, for example, griefers. Oh, and this is not just some game, this is an environment in which we pay real USD for land, land with a 'mature' rating no less, and as such it is only fair for us to demand quite a lot of freedom in what we do with the land whilst still being protected from intruders. The "don't do anything naughty with land" argument does not work becuase we're paying LL to let you own the land on the assumption that it's mature rated so we can do pretty much as we like with it, and that we will be able to use security tools to limit access.

i love this "protected" word tossed around by the common idiot on the forums

i suggest we keep the current system and let any land owner tp home who they wish up to 50million meters if needed

if you need more than that in sl? log off

There comes a point at which I have to say "if you don't like the possibility of your privacy being invaded, stay out of a massively multi-user world where you build on a common landscape that involves other people". That point was reached some time ago.

=== Security
* increasing height of ban lines
http://secondlife.com/vote/index.php?get_id=788 (19 votes)
http://secondlife.com/vote/index.php?get_id=999 (44 votes)

I think that the reason these proposals don't have a LOT more votes is because people don't want to limit others' ability to fly around.... of course, under the proposals I put forward above, this wouldn't be a problem becuase you'd just teleport through these parcels without seeing their contents.

an excellent deconstruction by Michi Lumin of why the current ban system does not work

So, Dr. Contrarian, I mean Lewis... When we get hit 7-8 times a day by 5-6 people at once tossing C4 into our gathering area and blowing us out of the sim...

What again are we supposed to do about it? ... Oh right. Log off. Or AR and just wait a few weeks, and find something else to do in the meantime. Gotcha.

Even when there's six of them, and they keep on coming back all night and blowing everyone away?

Oh, right. If it's not *your way*, then *I* have to leave. Don't interfere with the griefers! That's infringing on the civil liberties people have to fuck with whoever they want in whatever manner they choose!

Nevermind that private estate owners already *HAVE* these controls, and no, they did not pay more for it. I run 3 contiguous mainland sims, and the best we can do is complain to LiveHelp saying "please make them stop" which is met with a response telling me where the abuse report menu option is.

Just this week, I got some notices in my email on abuse reports that were filed in March.


The mainland is becoming NON-VIABLE for use in second life for gatherings and projects. I don't really care if YOU say that YOU haven't been pushed/bombed/thrown lately, but I see it EVERY DAY. Estate owners have seen updates to tools almost every release. Ban is "symbolic" on the mainland and ineffective. We have seen no tool improvements since SL 1.0.0.

If you want the nuts and bolts, and not just the sound bites, read this.

That's kind of like the worn-out "If you don't like the USA, live somewhere else".

I understand what you're saying, but it lacks empathy. A person paying real $ to use the SL system has a right to expect a certain amount of privacy and security. Griefers BREAKING TOS and blasting them to kingdom come, trashing their land and causing other problems is understandably an objectionable thing, wouldn't you agree?

A griefer visited our sims today. Rezzed trash all over the place, blasted a resident and mouthed off excessively insulting things. While I was trying to straighten out the mess... a Linden was called (showed up surprizingly quickly). There were FOUR WITNESSES to these issues. They were removed from our sim by us (not Linden Lab). An hour later, these users were still online.

I have to wonder why? Is a Linden not capable of examining evidence and making a decision that "These people do not need to be on here today"? Or are they incapable of such insight? I say it's high time for some LL policy changes.

I think you mean easement, not eminent domain.

That aside, 1 mile doesn't seem likely, as it is common to see traffic helicopters well within the range of a mile above the ground.

From http://www.faa.gov/region/aea/noise/backgd.htm :
How this applies to SL is probably completely irrelevant, but I saw the 1 mile figure and thought it seemed a bit high.


As to the topic of this thread, people certainly have different preferences in the balances between security, privacy, and liberty. You don't have to look too far in the current news to see this.

This is probably the proper way to implement privacy (filter at the server instead of the client), however the main problem with this is that it would certianly significantly degrade server performance.

The "interest list" (the server-side algorithm that determines what to send to you) is likely already a very complex and server-taxing process in it's current form. Adding the burden of also constantly filtering through a set of parcel flags and agent exception lists in addition to what it currently does will certainly make things worse.

Also, anything "private" would either have to be non-physics or the physics code would require a lot of very complicated filtering for collisions and parcel border threshold crossings, leading to even more server performance loss.

As with most things, you rarely can get something for nothing. Would you still want absolute privacy, even if it means significantly slower servers?

I've been pushing for llReturnObject() and some sort of land prim scanner along with having a script be able to set "No-outside script" on and off for some time.

I feel that scripts are the answer, not the problem.

Having a Script be able to set "No Scripts for that sim for the next x minutes" would also be useful even if it disables itself.
I know LL has the ablity to set "No script" since I've seen them do it and this would allow for a scripted defence system since it also disables "push only guns"

I use a weapon scanner script that scans for fast moving objects that are inside of my building and TP's the owner home. You can fly overhead, but don't use a vehicle or weapon inside of my building. IM me for a copy, I'll donate it to yardnies junkyard if anyone thinks it's useful.

I just wish I could turn off the "Bob to surface" setting on the land so that I can have a basement again.
Or how about a system where you pay extra L$ or L$/month to lower the "lower land limit" to zero?

How about having the teraform limit slowly move to center around where the land is curently at? This would be more like nature where you can, over time, move mountans.

Agreed. I was in a sim the other day when it was hit by a griefer. We filed abuse reports. Out of the two griefers, one of them disappeared from find shortly.
I put this down to :
1) A Linden I know was online at the time, and probably overheard me ask in Live Help about the issue.
2) We filed the abuse report on the one that disappeared using "view pvp abuse"... which seems to be the only kind of AR that is taken seriously.
3) Several people filed ARs, probably all from the guy who was shooting us.
4) The ARs we filed clearly said our area was a non-damage area and thus the shooter was breaking the LL ToS by pushing us.

I think ARs are useful, but you have to :
1) get lots of people to file them (useless if not many people are around, or they don't know how to file them correctly
2) use "view pvp abuse" to file them (useless if the person is abusing you in a way that doesn't generate a pvp abuse report, such as using some guns, spamming your chat, or similar)
3) state clearly which *SL* (NOT ISLAND ONLY) rule they are breaking.




Agreed. I was in a sim the other day when it was hit by a griefer. We filed abuse reports. Out of the two griefers, one of them disappeared from find shortly.
I put this down to :
1) A Linden I know was online at the time, and probably overheard me ask in Live Help about the issue.
2) We filed the abuse report on the one that disappeared using "view pvp abuse"... which seems to be the only kind of AR that is taken seriously.
3) Several people filed ARs, probably all from the guy who was shooting us.
4) The ARs we filed clearly said our area was a non-damage area and thus the shooter was breaking the LL ToS by pushing us.

I think ARs are useful, but you have to :
1) get lots of people to file them (useless if not many people are around, or they don't know how to file them correctly
2) use "view pvp abuse" to file them (useless if the person is abusing you in a way that doesn't generate a pvp abuse report, such as using some guns, spamming your chat, or similar)
3) state clearly which *SL* (NOT ISLAND ONLY) rule they are breaking.






If I were you, at this point I'd post something, nice and big, on my island that says :
"Until further notice, we are declaring martial law. Networked HomeLand Security orbs will be used around all telehubs, and they will be set so that anyone on their target list will be teleported home after the absolute minimum legal delay. Blame Linden Labs for this, and post at to complain about this policy which we are forced to use due to the totally inadequate anti-abuse tools provided to mainland sim owners."


[QUOTE=Wayfinder Wishbringer]
I understand what you're saying, but it lacks empathy. A person paying real $ to use the SL system has a right to expect a certain amount of privacy and security. Griefers BREAKING TOS and blasting them to kingdom come, trashing their land and causing other problems is understandably an objectionable thing, wouldn't you agree?
[/quote]
Agreed.
[QUOTE=Wayfinder Wishbringer]
A griefer visited our sims today. Rezzed trash all over the place, blasted a resident and mouthed off excessively insulting things. While I was trying to straighten out the mess... a Linden was called (showed up surprizingly quickly). There were FOUR WITNESSES to these issues. They were removed from our sim by us (not Linden Lab). An hour later, these users were still online.
[/quote]
LL's failure, quite clearly. These people shouldn't be allowed in SL, period. Either they were violating the ToS/CS, or the ToS/CS is inadequate and needs to cover such cases. They should have been banned from SL, IMHO.

[QUOTE=Wayfinder Wishbringer]
I have to wonder why? Is a Linden not capable of examining evidence and making a decision that "These people do not need to be on here today"? Or are they incapable of such insight? I say it's high time for some LL policy changes.[/QUOTE]
I think they just get so much abuse, some of it fake, that they've become jaded about the whole thing.

[QUOTE=Kex Godel]
As with most things, you rarely can get something for nothing. Would you still want absolute privacy, even if it means significantly slower servers?[/QUOTE]

The effects of slower servers can be negated by waiting.
The effects of a lack of privacy cannot.

[QUOTE=grumble Loudon]I've been pushing for llReturnObject() and some sort of land prim scanner along with having a script be able to set "No-outside script" on and off for some time.
[/quote]
Rightly so.
[QUOTE=grumble Loudon]
I feel that scripts are the answer, not the problem.

Having a Script be able to set "No Scripts for that sim for the next x minutes" would also be useful even if it disables itself.
I know LL has the ablity to set "No script" since I've seen them do it and this would allow for a scripted defence system since it also disables "push only guns"
[/quote]
Good idea, but personally I'd like it to be "disable all scripts in objects not owned by land owner" or 'disable all objects not set to the group the land is set to'.

[QUOTE=grumble Loudon]
I use a weapon scanner script that scans for fast moving objects that are inside of my building and TP's the owner home. You can fly overhead, but don't use a vehicle or weapon inside of my building. IM me for a copy, I'll donate it to yardnies junkyard if anyone thinks it's useful.
[/quote]

If you make it public, people will use it.

[QUOTE=grumble Loudon]
I just wish I could turn off the "Bob to surface" setting on the land so that I can have a basement again.
Or how about a system where you pay extra L$ or L$/month to lower the "lower land limit" to zero?

How about having the teraform limit slowly move to center around where the land is curently at? This would be more like nature where you can, over time, move mountans.[/QUOTE]
Hm, interesting ideas.

Not necessarily. After all, it would completely eliminate the necessity of even considering prims on blocked parcels in your interest list.

But it can't eliminate a prim from consideration until the prim is discovered, located, determined to be in a particular parcel, the parcel's attributes are looked up, and the banned access lists are compared with the viewer's ID. Repeat for every prim.

Oh, and of course, since this affects whether prims are visible, it also negates the ability to use culling because now that the prim doesn't render, it isn't blocking what's behind it from being seen, and you now have to look up all the prims behind it, behind them, and so on until you see clear through the plot. Yeah, this ought to hit you hard performance-wise.